Try Not to Scream
by jabbrjays
Summary: "Let's get this show on the road. We have the firepower, we have the manpower, we have… is that a baseball bat? Okay. We have a baseball bat. Let's burn those murdering fucks to the ground." (Series rewrite, AU. Slowbuilding Fax. Complete.)
1. End of an Era

_"Hey, Young blood!_

 _Doesn't it feel_

 _like our time is running out?"_

 ** _The Phoenix, Fall Out Boy_**

* * *

The sun was slowly sinking beneath the horizon, sending long red rays of light across the canyon walls. I was sitting on the very edge of the cliff, legs dangling out over open air, so my well-worn combat boots were painted too. I took a deep breath of summer air. It wasn't much—today had been humid as all-get-out, and even now the air felt like soup. It would take until night for it to be anywhere near breathable. But when you spent the first eight years of your life in an industrial mad science laboratory, breathing air that was more Clorox than actual oxygen, you learned to savor the small things in life, the little bits of freedom that the world gave you every day. Things like dry grass, muggy air, sturdy boots, sunsets, and somebody to watch them with.

My legs weren't the only ones dangling over a couple-hundred-foot drop, but my boots were the only ones that were changing color—black didn't do much in the way of changing with the light.

"Fang," I said, and prodded my sunset-watching buddy in the arm. He gave me a sidelong glance. "Pass the Coke."

He handed me the half-empty glass bottle. I took a swig. Ah, carbonation. God's gift to mankind.

"You know," I said, handing the bottle back, "summer's my favorite season."

He grunted and took a sip.

I elbowed him. "I'm being sentimental. You're supposed to ask me _why_."

His long-suffering sigh was the most obnoxious thing I had heard that week, and I had suffered through an hour of cartoon reruns with the kids on Wednesday. "Alright," he said, " _why_?"

I frowned and grabbed the bottle away from him. "Nice try, but losers don't get soda."

This got me an eye-roll accompanied by a middle finger.

"Thanks for your wonderful apology," I told him. "Really moved my heart. Ten out of ten; would accept again."

Nothing. He just rested his elbows on his knees and leaned forward to cradle his chin in his palms, pointedly staring at the setting sun. I sighed. He was like that sometimes—well, okay, _many_ times… well, okay. Always.

I leaned forward too; very much aware of how close I was to slipping off the edge. One shift forward would be all that it would take. And then I'd be falling into the canyon below, muggy air turned biting as it rushed against me, my hair pulled free from its braid…

"Summer's my favorite season," I said, "because we don't have to worry about the time. The sun sets super late, so we can have dinner and head out. All we really have to worry about is the—"

"— _Dishes_!"

I groaned. "Really, Iggy? Really?"

Iggy was leaning out of the window, the one that opened out right over the canyon. His shaggy red-blond hair more or less matched the sunlight, which made his filmed-over blue eyes seem even more out of place with the world around him. "You know it."

"Couldn't you do them this one time?"

It's not like Iggy wanted to watch the sunset with Fang and me—it's not like he _could_. We all had our scars and oddities, but Iggy had really gotten the short end of the stick.

" _Please_?" I added, my voice as nice as I could make it. Unlike the other two girls in our messed-up adopted family, I wasn't gifted with a cuteness gene that would let me get away with murder. I'm more of a _do this or I'll knock your lights out_ kind of gal. But it didn't hurt to try.

"Nope!"

"And just _what_ do you think you're doing?" This voice managed to blend sarcasm with annoyance—the ultimate dad voice.

I smirked. "Hi, Jeb!"

"Max isn't doing the dishes," Iggy said, climbing back inside the house.

I took a sip of Coke. "Fight me."

Jeb leaned out the window, and the sunlight glinted off his glasses. "Maximum, either do the dishes or mediate with your brother."

I groaned. Hey, wait a second— _brother_. He didn't say which one. I turned to Fang. "Do the dishes for me?"

This got me my second eye-roll of the past five minutes—wow, _I_ was on a _roll_. But he sighed in a way that let me know I had won. That was one of the perks of living with Fang—you got really good at picking up on his body language.

I leaned forward again, dedicating my attention to the setting sun. It was bright red in a way that endless white linoleum wasn't, moving in a way that glaring incandescent lights didn't, and showing how rough and uneven the walls of the canyon were, in a way that the mazelike white walls of my childhood weren't. My grin died down, but a different feeling curled up in my throat. I was really blessed. Every day I got to wake up free and surrounded by my family—admittedly, none of them were related to me by blood, but they were my _family_ all the same. I got to run wild around the Gunnison Mountains, not reporting to anybody but Jeb. And I could—

Fang tapped me on my right shoulder. I twisted to face him as he trailed his fingertips down the ridges of my spine. When he hit the middle of my back he pressed his whole hand against me, smirked, and shoved me off the cliff.

I absolutely did not let out a girly shriek as I went tumbling down, my arms and legs flailing. The wind screamed in my ears as the rocky ground rushed up to meet me. I was falling too fast to breathe, too fast for the world to be anything but a blur. I was going to—

I snapped out my wings. It hurt—every muscle in my core screamed as I was abruptly jerked up by what was, essentially, a pair of seven-foot-long feathery parachutes, and it took a few awkward flaps before I was doing anything less than falling at a slightly slower rate. But after six years of complete freedom, I was used to moving around in the air. I circled for a moment, letting my heart slow down. That was when I noticed that my shirt and the thighs of my jeans had soda spattered all over them. I groaned all the way up to the cliff.

"Fang, you _jackass_!" He was already at the door of our house, but he gave me a glance back. It was amazing how much smugness he could pack into an otherwise completely neutral facial expression. I kicked out at him—completely pointless, because he was a good five meters away, but the gesture was still there. "You made me spill my Coke!"

He smirked and headed inside. I beat my wings down and started off further into the canyon, but something caught my eye.

I stopped, hovering just past the window.

Ari, Jeb's son, was standing stock-still in the main room, his eyes fixed on me.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack, kid," I told him, but spread my arms wide. "C'mon, get."

I didn't think it was possible for his eyes to get any wider than they had been. I was wrong. "Really?"

I nodded.

He grinned at me, and sprinted for the window, clambering up onto the frame and launching himself out into empty air. He took to the air like I took to water, flailing like crazy. But his jump was good enough to send him up for a moment instead of straight down, and for a half-second he was suspended. I caught him just before he started to fall. His arms locked around my neck so hard that it took my breath away.

And I flipped out. Shock coursed through my veins and I dropped, my wings seizing up.

I was used to fighting—I sparred with Fang and Iggy on the regular. And I was used to carrying Ari around—as the oldest and the toughest (and, I'll admit it, the coolest), I was the natural choice for it. But the iron-bar grip around my neck, coming out of nowhere, might as well have erased the six years separating me from my godawful childhood. As I dropped, I was a kid again, caught in a chokehold by one of a thousand different Erasers.

It was the wind whipping around my face that brought me back to my senses, and I pushed down hard, every muscle in my body aching. Coming out of a fall wasn't fun, and carrying Ari wasn't easy. But combined? It was like doing decline pushups with a backpack full of rocks.

A backpack full of rocks that was whooping. "That was awesome!" Ari shouted. "I thought I was gonna _die_! Do it again!"

I was just about to respond in the hell negative when we passed by the window again, and I caught sight of Jeb, his arms folded over his chest. I groaned and swooped down and in through the open window, avoiding him by about a quarter-inch.

Jeb cleared his throat. "Maximum—human bodies are not, perhaps, the best things to be lugging around hundreds of feet in the air—"

"I was holding on _really_ tight," Ari protested, and my mouth screwed up. He had been. That had been like, half the problem.

Jeb stared Ari down and he shriveled. It was like watching a documentary about autumn, when they fast-forwarded through leaves going from green and flexible to brown and brittle. Jeb's face softened a bit when he looked back to me, but disappointment was still written in the fine lines around his eyes. "We've talked about this, Max. You need to think beyond the moment—you're not a kid anymore."

Now _that_ wasn't fair. I opened my mouth to retort but before I could, a towheaded eight-year-old skidded into the room on his socks, his little sister following behind—walking, like a normal person. The only two biological siblings in our messed-up family of mutants, Gazzy and Angel shared light blond hair that turned a bloody orange in the light of the setting sun.

"Hey, Max!" Gazzy said. "We're gonna watch _I Was A Teenage Werewolf_. Wanna join?"

Angel frowned at him. "That's insensitive," she said, pronouncing the second word syllable by syllable. "Max has nightmaresabout werewolves."

Even though I'd grown upwith her telepathy antics, it was still like having somebody drop an ice cube down the back of my shirt to slide slowly down my spine. The hair on the back of my neck prickled.

"Hey!" My voice wavered, and I took an unconscious step closer to the window. "I don't…" I bit my lip. Angel knew all too well what I had nightmares about. "I don't have nightmares about _werewolves_ ," I clarified. "Erasers aren't werewolves. They don't… change." They just _were_ , spliced with wolves the same way we were spliced with birds. They weren't furry enough to get noticed as freaks, but they had jaws that jutted out to hold their razor-sharp teeth and thumbs that didn't work all the way. And they were able to get a bitbigger than humans, if small-town Coloradans were any kind of indication. It made them easier to spot in a crowd, which was part of the reason I only spent two-thirds of every outing glancing over my shoulder, instead of three-fourths.

Angel put her hand in mine and stared up at me, blue eyes _way_ too serious for a six-year-old. "It's going to be alright," she said. "I promise."

I blinked. "Angel, that's sweet of you," I said. The _but you're six years old and Lunchable-sized_ I figured could be left for another time.

"I promise too," Gazzy said, jutting out his lower lip as he folded his arms over his chest. "They come for us, I'll beat 'em up."

Jesus. He was _eight_. Wasn't the testosterone-alpha-male thing not supposed to come up for a few years?

"Me too!" Ari chimed in, and I had to bite back a snort at that one. If the day came when I was relying on him to defend me from giant wolf monsters, I'd hang up my combat boots.

It was kind of sweet, in a stupid way. And then Nudge came out of the kitchen, scowling at me and wiping her sudsy hands off on her shorts. The moment broke as she stalked over to switch on the TV and set up the movie, not breaking her glare even as the opening theme started to play and the kids crowded onto the sofa.

I rolled my eyes at her, and her scowl grew even more exaggerated, turning into a pout.

"Fang quit halfway through," she grumbled. "And I had to do the rest and it's not fair 'cause it's _your turn_."

"And you skipped out _last time_ ," I said, mimicking her tone as best as I could. It didn't work perfectly—I'm not sure what bird was used to make me, but it wasn't a parrot—but it got the point across and her pout turned into a glower.

I sighed and crossed the room to ruffle her hair—it was twisted out now—and poke her in the ticklish spot just under her ribcage. She let out a snort and twisted away to sit on the couch, but her scowl broken when she did.

"Maximum," Jeb said. Oh. Right. Lecture. Jeez, he was the one who wanted us to be strong. And I wasn't complaining about that—being strong was something that was _mine_ as much as the wide-open sky. But if he wanted me to be strong so much, then he shouldn't put up a fuss about how much I was goddamn lifting!

"That sure is my name," I said, and gave him one of my best _whatcha gonna do about it_ grins before heading back across the room and scrambling out of the window backwards, only twisting when I was in the air. It was a _bitch_ on the abs, but a pretty awesome way to leave. Once I was in the air I flapped hard. I kept pushing up, until there was nothing around me but purple-black empty sky—and I kept going, higher and higher, until my head started to ache from the speed and the lack of air. I spun in a quick circle and then pulled my wings in and dived, rushing toward the cliff. The wind was screaming against my face, making me squint—making it more likely for me to miss, or to crash into the cliff.

Either way I'd die.

Everything was so clear like this, the ground a tiny circle that I was speeding towards—

I snapped my wings out and beat them as hard as I could, thrashing against the air. My legs were kicking out almost involuntarily, pedaling me into a more upright position. I landed hard on my heels and tipped forward—thank God I was able to throw out an arm to catch myself, or I'd have been eating dirt. I exhaled, grinning, and folded my wings back in.

Behind me and to my right, Iggy snorted. "Klutz." But the way he said it was different than usual. Something was missing.

I straightened up and went to sit by him. "Let's see you do better." I whacked him on the back of the head with a wing, and he gave me a half-hearted shove.

That took me by surprise—Iggy usually wasn't anywhere near apathetic. "What's up?"

He hesitated, shrugged. "It's just… being fourteen. 'S weird. I kinda feel like I'm growing up too fast, kinda feel like I want to be sixteen already."

"Sixteen?"

"Yeah," he said, sounding more enthusiastic. "Sixteen's the year right in the middle of being a teenager. We get used to the hormones from thirteen to fifteen, when we're seventeen and eighteen and nineteen we grow the hell up. Sixteen's the sweet spot. It's a year where you haven't grown into your responsibilities, but you have grown into your ability to party. That's why those white girls have sweet sixteens. And according to Nudge's YA novels, that's when you learn to day-drink and drive."

" _Right_ ," I said. "Because they'd let you behind the wheel."

Iggy laughed. "I know, right? I'm too goddamn handsome. I'd cause accidents. I'd get away with vehicular manslaughter. It's for the good of humanity that this beauty is kept in the shotgun seat… while _your_ three outta ten ass ferries me around."

I flipped him off. "I'm a solid five, fuck you and the horse you rode in on."

Fang chose that moment to land on the cliff as well. Even though it had hit eight-five today, he was wearing a black turtleneck and black skinnies, and his black overlong hair hung in a ponytail between his—wait for it—completely black wings. How he didn't trip over himself in the dark, I had no idea.

I tilted my head back to try to focus on him. "What's up?"

He just shrugged and sat down on my right, slinging an arm over my shoulder and wrapping a still-warm wing around Iggy and me. It was super comfortable—like a feathery heated blanket.

"Fang," Iggy yawned. "You beautiful mute space heater."

Fang's grin was a flash of white teeth in the night, and I shifted down so I could rest my head on his shoulder. He was two inches taller than me, which was _ridiculously_ unfair, seeing as I was four months older. But at the same time, the height difference let me use him like a pillow, so… win some, lose some.

By now, the canyon beneath us had filled up with shadows that swamped anything remotely recognizable. We could be in New York for all I knew. I groaned. "I can't see my hand in front of my face."

Iggy gasped. "Really? Me neither! God, we have so much in common—let's get married. Fang, you wear nothing but black, I can't imagine that you can see your hands either—let's make this marriage a threeway. It's legal in Utah—you two can be my wives."

Both Fang and I shoved at him at the same time—me with a hand, Fang with a wing, and he skidded half-off the cliff. I had to grab him and haul him back, which was made easier by the fact that he still, somehow, weighed less than me. Once he was on solid ground he stood and stretched.

"Well, it's been good knowing you losers. But some of us have to wake up in the morning and be productive members of society, so I'm gonna bounce." He headed back for the E-shaped house, for the only source of light for miles.

Fang wrapped his wing tighter around me, and I scooted so we were sitting thigh-to-thigh, his head resting on mine, my head still on his shoulder. I could spend the whole night like this, watching the moon go across the sky, waiting for the world to lighten. I had, in fact, a couple of times. Iggy had made hot chocolate and coffee in varying batches and the three of us had told ghost stories and dared each other to eat various bits of flora. But maybe tonight wasn't the best night to do that. I was already overdue for a lecture from Jeb.

"Y'wanna turn in?" I asked Fang, barely stifling a yawn.

His head shifted against mine.

"A'ight." I swung my legs up onto the ground and pulled free from his wing, stretched, and offered him a hand up.

He took it, and we headed back inside together.

—

[ **D. G.** has _created a group chat on the_ _ **Departmental Heads**_ _board_ ]  
[ **D. G.** has _logged on_ ]  
[ **S. H.** has _logged on_ ]  
[ **A. W.** has _logged on_ ]  
[ **S. J.** has _logged on_ ]  
 **D. G.:** We need to discuss Batchelder.  
 **D. G.:** Specifically, the nature of his care for the 1A batch.  
 **D. G.:** His reports have been negligent at best, and purposefully evasive at worst.  
 **D. G.:** His care as a guardian is suspect.  
 **S. J.:** I was thinking the same thing, haha! Not to speak ill of Dr. Batchelder, but…  
 **S. J.:** All of his reports about the kids are very, um, very rudimentary! And occasionally inconsistent…  
 **S. J.:** He'll occasionally mention nightmares and PTSD, but then in the next report, he'll report that they're all functioning at peak capacity, no reason to worry!  
 **S. J.:** I think he might be lying to us…  
 **A. W.:** Personally, I think your decision to allow him to have complete control over the children was a mistake.  
 **A. W.:** I would have kept them in California, under Dr. Johnson's supervision.  
 **S. J.:** (Thanks!)  
 **A. W.:** (You're welcome.)  
 **A. W.:** Over the years that I've grown to know Dr. Batchelder, it's become evident that he suffers from some kind of megalomania. Exposing impressionable children to that is hardly wise.  
 **A. W.:** And with the import that the 1A batch has…  
 **S. H.:** (i still think we shoulda called em A1)  
 **S. H.:** (yknow)  
 **S. H.:** (like steak sauce)  
 **S. H.:** that bein said jebs not a bad man and in fact i think the kids r fine with him  
 **S. H.:** he took decent enough care of the first three so im sure hell do fine with the others  
 **D. G.:** This isn't a question of your certainty. This is a matter of Batchelder's incompetence.  
 **D. G.:** He might have already damaged them beyond repair, and with the set date for Phase II drawing nearer and nearer, I believe a conference is necessary.  
 **A. W.:** This is Dr. Batchelder. He won't listen unless you have him in a position that he can't get out of.  
 **S.H.:** ( ud know about that wouldnt u)  
 **D. G.:** What do you suggest that we do?  
 **A. W.:** Did he leave his son behind? I would suggest that you use the child as ransom. Threaten to mutate him.  
 **A. W.:** Batchelder will send the children or come himself. If he sends the children, find out what they know about Phases II and III. If he comes himself, the children will follow.  
 **A. W.:** While I don't advocate harming children, there are times when there simply is no other choice.  
 **A. W.:** Now, if you'll excuse me.  
[ **A. W.** has _logged out_ ]  
 **S. J.:** That sounds harsh…  
 **S. J.:** A good thing for the kid, then! Dr. Batchelder brought him with the Flock when he left!  
 **S. J.:** Speaking of kids… I'd better go! I think I can hear crying!  
[ **S. J.** has _logged out_ ]  
 **D. G.:** Any suggestions?  
 **S. H.:** well yeah  
 **S. H.:** we don't have any of the tiny defenseless easily mutated kids _now_  
 **S. H.:** (i mean we do but not the ones that batchelder cares about)  
 **S. H.:** but it wouldn't be that hard to get some  
 **S. H.:** yknow?  
 **S. H.:** anyway i gotta go pm me w the deets of whatever you decide to come up with  
[ **S. H.** has _logged out_ ]  
[ **D. G.** has _closed the group chat_ ]  
[ **D. G.** has _logged out_ ]

* * *

 _Heya! I'm kamicrazy, and this is Maximum Ride: New Beginning. Well, more specifically, this is Try Not to Scream. But it's a part of MRNB—one of four. What's MRNB, you're asking. Good question! MRNB is a series rewrite that uses an altered backstory as a springboard for a streamlined and altered plot with SO MUCH character development, ZERO random power development scenes, VERY LITTLE bullshit (I'd like to guarantee NO BULLSHIT WHATSOEVER, but frankly nobody is perfect), HELLA fight scenes, AT LEAST ONE makeout, and nothing but complete honesty from me as a writer to you my audience. In the spirit of that honesty, let's have a very quick recap of things that differ from MR canon!_

 _—Ari and Jeb are at the E-shaped house._

 _—Ari is still human and seven years old._

 _—Eraser physiology! They can't morph here because morphing is stupid and doesn't follow actual science rules. So I've altered them to follow as many science rules as possible as to not break my suspension of disbelief._

 _—Iggy's five months younger than Max as opposed to six. This isn't a big deal or anything, but when I was giving them birthdays, that's how it turned out._

 _—Gazzy can't mimic voices. I was trying to find a way to make his power useful, couldn't, and decided to scrap it. Likewise, Nudge can't move metal, Fang can't go invisible, Max doesn't have super speed, Iggy can't feel colors, Angel can't shapeshift… et cetera. If these kids find themselves with downtime, they'll be doing something more productive with it than randomly mutating._

 _—Several original characters have been added, as the group chat informs you. They're not going to completely take over the plot—MRNB is first and foremost about the birdkids._

 _—MRNB is being beta-read by **Tokoloshe Monster**_ _, who is awesome, as opposed to MR, which was presumably beta-read by nobody... as awesome._

 _There are many other things that have been changed, but telling you all of it would get into spoiler territory. Let's just say that you're in for a ride._


	2. Camaraderie

_Thanks to **Tokoloshe Monster** for beta-reading and to Grace for helping to explain to me how Nudge's hair worked. Also for coffee, without whom this entire story would not be possible._

* * *

Ari Batchelder slid out of bed and landed noiselessly on the floor. It was a skill perfected over years, and not an insignificant one. When you shared a room with a fourteen-year-old that woke on a dime and hit before asking questions, you learned to be quiet when you snuck around at night. No matter how bad the nightmares were.

Tonight hadn't been so bad. It was just the drowning one. There were worse nights.

But okay, it was still pretty bad.

Fresh air would help. He could go up to the big room and fall asleep by an open window. Jeb wouldn't mind that, even though he didn't like it when Ari wandered around at night. But being scolded beat being having to sit all night in a closed-up room, positive that any second the air would turn into water and rush up his nose and down his throat.

Ari headed out of the room, trying to sneak and walk fast at the same time. It didn't work too well, and the result was something closer to a crawl. But it got him to the main room, and that was good enough. The main room was huge—there was no way all of it could fill up with water _._ It took up about a third of the ground floor and even had a set of windows that opened like doors, facing off the edge of the cliff. Sometimes Jeb had the Flock jump out of those windows to practice their takeoffs. Sometimes Ari jumped out of the windows, but he couldn't do takeoffs, so he was more helping the Flock practice carrying things.

It was there that Max was standing, looking out at the mountains. Ari didn't recognize her for a moment, because she was standing so still. Usually Max was moving. She was either fighting somebody or she was flying, her feathers ruffled by the wind and her wings moving powerfully as she moved through the air like an Olympic swimmer through water. Even on days when they had to study, Max would get up and walk around every so often, and when she read her fingers tended to beat out a nonstop rhythm on the nearest available surface.

But as Ari crept closer to her, he realized that she wasn't entirelymotionless. She was shaking, breathing in and out slowly, and clenching her hands into fists.

"Max?" he said.

She glanced down at him. "Hey, kiddo." Her voice sounded rougher than usual. "Nightmare?"

Ari nodded.

She smiled, but not like she was making fun of him. It was a weird smile, and Ari didn't understand it. "Me too." She stared out the window for another second, but unclenched her fist. "How about we go up to my room and play checkers?"

"Yeah!" No way would dogs get him if he stuck with Max. Max was the best fighter _ever_ , and she was going to save the world. Jeb had said so. Jeb had also said not to tell Max, which kind of stunk, because Max was so cool. She should know what cool stuff she was going to do.

But he kept his mouth shut as he followed Max up the ladder to her room. Jeb had let her have one of the two attic rooms, the one that he wasn't using. She didn't have to share with somebody else because she was the leader. And also because she had said two years ago that she would rather sleep on the cold hard dirt than share a room with Nudge.

Max's room was definitely the coolest. It was small, barely big enough for a bed, but it always had its one window cracked open, so there was plenty of fresh air. She had commandeered all of them to help her paint the sloped ceiling like the sky, light blue with white wisps of clouds. Ari had helped Nudge and Fang do the clouds, while Gazzy was on dropcloth duty and Iggy and Angel put down the background layers of blue. Everything else, though, looked like a rainbow had puked all over it. Max tended to care more about how comfy something was than its color, so the floor was covered with multicolored quilts and rugs. Sometimes the seven of them would have a sleepover in her room, and end up crashing on pretty much any part of the floor. Kind of like kittens, except the Flock had wings and they weren't part cat.

She pulled out the checkers board from the box under the bed and set it up. "You're getting red for the first round," she said. "I'll even go easy on you."

"Please," Ari said, trying to sound tough. "I'm the checkers champ. I'll be the one going easy on you."

He then proceeded to thoroughly lose the next six games, and lose half his pieces in the first five minutes of the seventh, upon which point Max put away the checkers board.

"It's like…" Max glanced out the window. For whatever reason, she didn't keep a clock in her room. "Three in the morning. We should get some shut-eye."

"Oh, okay." Ari stood up to go, but Max rolled her eyes and grabbed his wrist. Her grasp was warm and strong as she pulled him back.

"What, do you think I'm kicking you out?" She snorted. "I'm hurt. Grab some bed and chill."

They settled down with Ari curled up at the foot of the bed and Max sleeping on her front, her wings slightly unfurled.

He didn't dream.

He woke up to light, bright and cold, streaming in through the window, and to the sound of Jeb's voice calling up from the main room.

"Max? Wake up, come on."

For a split second, Ari froze. If Jeb came up, he was in serious trouble. And then Max groaned and stirred, and he let out a breath.

"'M up," she mumbled. "Time izzit?"

Jeb's voice was dry. "Noon."

"Aw, crap." Max launched herself out of bed, nearly tripped, and caught herself on the wall. "I'll be down in five minutes," she called, and shooed Ari down the ladder so she could change.

As Ari clambered down, his stomach twisted. Sure enough, when he hit the ground and turned around, Jeb stood there with a raised eyebrow.

"Sorry, sir," Ari muttered, eyes trained on a spot in the wall just to the left of Jeb's head.

"Ari, we talked about this," Jeb said. "You need to grow up and rely on Max less."

"Sorry," Ari repeated.

Jeb sighed. "I'm disappointed in you. And if I catch you up in Max's room—or in Nudge or Iggy's—you're grounded. Understand?"

As far as scoldings went, this one wasn't too bad. But as far as punishments went, this stunk. It wasn't like he went into Nudge's room regularly anyway—Angel's ability to read minds carried over to reading dreams, and sometimes even _sharing_ them, and he didn't want her to have to deal with his nightmares. And he almost never slept in Iggy's room, preferring instead to crash on the couch in the main room with Gazzy after a night of late-night scary movies. But no sharing rooms meant no more sleepovers or movie nights. And when the nightmares came, it would mean that he wouldn't be able to go back to sleep at all. Ari nodded, keeping his face still.

That was when Max jumped through the attic door, landing lightly on the wood floor. She straightened up quickly enough for Ari to have a hard time following the motion, and stretched, her wings spreading out as her spine arched backward.

It was so cool. Maybe when Ari was older, he could do that.

"What'd I miss?" Max said.

"Not much," Iggy said, wandering in from the kitchen. His hands were clasped behind his head and he was still in his pajamas. "I mean, if you don't count the hookers…"

"Jeb's in the room," Max said, smirking, as Ari winced.

"—I mean the, um, Bible study tutors," Iggy said, light blue eyes going wide. "The nuns. Who teach the Bible. Um, hail Jesus."

"I think I should start filtering your guys' Internet usage," Jeb said. "Iggy, how's lunch coming?"

Iggy shrugged. "Rice is done. Beans still need a few minutes, though."

"I'll take care of that. Why don't you get changed? Max, Ari, you two get the others, and we can figure out what we're going to do for the rest of break day."

Ari nodded and headed off downstairs with Iggy. _Get the others_ was code for _hang out with Iggy and Gazzy_ , because the girls didn't want him in their room and he didn't want to risk startling Fang and getting knocked out again.

"Hey, Ari," the Gasman said. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, fiddling with the inner workings of a radio. "Wanna see this?"

Ari sat across from him. "Is it working?"

The Gasman nodded. "Reception still stinks, though. Iggy thinks that we should just switch antennas, but that's just a temporary solution. And the crank isn't working right, but we can make a trip down to town to get another one if Jeb okays it."

"Cool," Ari said, wishing that he understood half of the stuff Gazzy could do with machines. And explosives. Behind them, Iggy was changing, trading the pajamas out for jeans and a sweatshirt. A discarded shirt hit Ari's head.

Iggy, now changed, headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. "C'mon, punks."

They went up into the kitchen, and after the usual round of try-not-to-end-up-directly-downwind-from-Gazzy, tucked into lunch. While they stuffed their faces, Jeb was the first to speak.

"So, suggestions for the afternoon?"

"Manhunt!" Iggy shouted, so fast that even Fang twitched.

Gazzy's arm shot into the air. "Seconded!"

Ari raised his hand, too. "Thirded!" Manhunt was _awesome_ , mostly because nobody targeted him unless he teamed up with Iggy and Gazzy. It meant that he got to wander around alone in the woods for a full afternoon. One time he had even found a cave.

Nudge slouched in her seat, folding her arms across her chest and tugging on one of her ringlets. "We did manhunt last week, and you jerks tried to bomb us." Her eyes slid to Max.

Max just shrugged and swallowed her mouthful of food. "Booby-traps are fair game," she said.

"I know," Nudge sighed. "Which is exactly why I _don't_ want to play Manhunt. We do enough work with dumb boring booby traps during the week. I think we should stay inside and work on our own stuff. I'm _so close_ to finishing _Hogfather_. And I'm at this really cool part too, Susan's going to this fancy school to find out about—"

Fang turned one of his intent stares on her and she trailed off. When he didn't say anything, she stared back at him, tugging on one of her twisted bits of hair. "Is that a yes?" she asked.

He shrugged, his expression blank. It stayed that way when Max muttered something about sewing, but he did kick her under the table.

"I think we should go pick strawberries," Angel said. "They're ripe now. And we can even make like a late second birthday pie for Iggy."

"Seconded," Max said. After a moment of consideration Fang raised a hand.

Ari, not to be outdone, put his hand in the air. "Fourth-ed."

Gazzy, who was on the receiving end of one of Angel's piercing stares, groaned. "Fine, I'm in too."

Angel beamed.

It took everybody a good half hour to clean up, find clean produce baskets, get their shoes on, and head out. Nudge was grumbling as she gathered up wildflowers to braid into bracelets, the phrase "not fair" coming up about twice a minute as her forearms became increasingly covered in color. Iggy was meandering along a few meters behind the others. Ari was more or less in the center of the group, a few feet away from both Max and Jeb. It was an easy place to be, and one that didn't incite much conversation.

The walk itself took less time than the decision to make it, and the sun was shining the whole way. It was a bright and cloudless June day, and the mountain air helped take the edge off of the high heat of noon. Gazzy was whistling the tune of some pop song that had been on the radio non-stop for the past month, and the sun was gleaming off of the blonde streaks in Max's hair. Fang stalked along with his hands in his pockets, somehow not boiling alive despite wearing nothing but black.

The strawberry patch was fortunately deserted—the bear incident of last year was still fresh in Ari's memory—and full of ripe red berries. And even better, there wasn't much wind, so Ari didn't worry that he'd be blown off of the cliff that it was on the edge of.

They fell to picking immediately, and although they were eating just as much as they were putting in their baskets, it was looking to be a remarkably productive afternoon. The three older kids weren't bickering, and Nudge wasn't trying to explain exactlyhow a carburetor worked… Ari could feel the corners of his mouth tugging up.

It looked like it was going to be a good day. And later there would be pie for the second time in a week—Iggy's fourteenth birthday had been Sunday, on the twelfth. He had made pie for that one, too.

"Hey," Iggy said, placing his basket of strawberries down on the grass. He stood up straight and cocked his head to the side. "What's that noise?"

The rest of the Flock froze, listening. Ari tried to listen too, but his ears weren't as good as theirs. Even so, he could hear it after a few minutes. It sounded like somebody had a giant blender and they were spinning the blades really fast—

"Helicopter," Fang said.

"But nobody comes here!" Nudge protested. "The only things that fly over are like airplanes, and that's only sometimes, and we don't hear them like this! Wait. That means that this is—"

Max's eyes were wide. "Erasers."

* * *

 _Going to put this note here instead of on ch01, because Reasons. ch01 was originally more of a prologue, a scene of Jeb breaking the Flock out of the School. I decided to change it to a present-day chapter because I really didn't like having that six-year gap, as starting off with Max at eight gave people the false impression that they'd be seeing her at nine and ten and eleven and twelve and thirteen. I apologize for that impression. MRNB is more close-packed than that. Hence, a first chapter that more or less gives you a look into how things will be over the course of TNTS. I say "more or less" because by now, things have started to change. I'll probably make the original first chapter available somewhere, along with some "growing up" oneshots that are like, not actually tied to the story, if there's an interest expressed._

 _Back to writing-related things._

 _One of the side-effects of the rewritten ch01 is that now ch01 and ch02 are functionally identical in terms of content. This isn't ideal but it does present a look at the cast through different viewpoints, which could help firmly establish who they are and what they're like before the story starts. And seeing as things go downhill from here really quickly, that can be a benefit. Of course it could also be boring, seeing just about the same boring things happen through different boring viewpoints. Let me know what you think in a review!_


	3. So Sharp and Bright

_Much thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster._

* * *

My mind was racing, my palms clammy, and my stomach churning. I forced myself to take deep breaths, and glanced at the rest of my Flock. They had all adopted fighting stances. Gazzy had positioned himself between the direction of the chopper and Angel, extending his off-white wings. Like his scrawny little eight-year-old body was enough to keep them from getting at her.

"Max." Jeb's voice stopped me from running off the cliff and jumping into the air to take the chopper head-on in a fit of protective fury. "Max, take the kids and run." His eyes darted from me, to Angel, to the chopper.

"What?" I snapped.

He glared at me. "You heard me. Maximum, there isn't time for an argument. Just—"

"Just leave my family unprotected? I can't believe this! It's because I'm a girl, isn't it?" I gestured at Nudge. "Why don't you have _her_ take them back? She's a kid, too!"

"Hey!" Nudge protested, but I ignored her, taking a step closer to where Fang stood. The chopper was close enough for one of Iggy's bombs to hit it. But of course he hadn't brought any, because that would have made this _easy_. Regardless, in a few moments there wouldn't be any time for this pointless argument.

"Kids," I said, not taking my eyes off of the chopper, "Run."

I didn't hear them move. I was about to repeat myself when it landed, and then I didn't have time to talk.

The first Eraser jumped out with its huge teeth bared in a snarl. I charged and drove it past the nose of the chopper, slamming my shoulder into its chest and my elbow into its gut. Unfortunately it managed to plant its feet before we both tumbled off of the cliff, and we grappled with each other.

Well, okay. It grappled. I dodged.

But I couldn't dodge forever. It crashed into me, knocking us away from the cliff's edge.

For a second the world was gray and fuzzy with shock. My lungs wouldn't expand. My eyes couldn't focus.

And then my torso exploded with pain. I hit the ground hard, pinneddown and getting crushed by a wolf-monster made of muscle. I grabbed the Eraser by the neck, trying to force it off me. Didn't work.

So instead I rolled and slammed it against the landing gear of the helicopter. The Eraser swore and its weight shifted. Not by much, but enough for me to get free. I kicked away and pushed myself to my feet, panting. Every inhale hurt, but I forced myself to breathe. I couldn't fight without air, and the pain was just a message. I could ignore it.

But I couldn't ignore the cramping muscles in my chest. Adrenaline was keeping me up, but it was a dizzy high. I wouldn't be able to roundhouse kick my way out of this one. I'd just get my leg grabbed and broken.

The Eraser stood, growling, and lunged at me. I jumped back and its clawlike hand passed through the space where my head had just been. It stumbled, but caught its balance, and we circled each other. It was six-four to my five-eight, and at least two-twenty to my one-forty. But I had something it didn't.

Wings.

So I let it take a step forward. I edged to the right, towards the dizzying drop off of the cliff. It smirked and slipped into a crouch.

Shuffle-step to the right. Four and a half feet away from the edge. Legs cramping, black eye throbbing, ribs aching. Breathing felt like something was stabbing my lungs.

Shuffle. Four feet.

It was drooling now, its saliva tinged pink and smelling like raw meat.

Three feet.

I tensed my muscles and crouched as if I was about to jump. My legs burned in protest.

It lunged.

My knees hit the ground. I bent over backwards as it passed over me. I snapped out my left wing and smashed it into the Eraser's side, sending it flailing out into the open air. After a moment, its body crashed into the rocks and the stink of blood and viscera began to waft up.

Great. We'd have to clean that up if we got out of this alive. Wouldn't want anybody finding it.

I forced myself to my knees, and then to my feet. My legs felt both loose and tight at the same time and my heart was racing. My wing was aching in a way that let me know that I was in for a world of hurt. Things were blurring around me. Whatever. I could deal with my injuries later. Right now my Flock needed me.

I walked on unsteady legs from out behind the helicopter and glanced around the field.

Gazzy and Angel were shadowing an Eraser, easily evading it. Whenever it lunged at one of them, the other would take advantage of a weak spot and attack.

Nudge and Ari had taken some damage but were dodging attacks from three Erasers at the same time. As I watched, Nudge lured one into lunging at her, skittered back as it fell, and kicked its nose into its skull. The sounds of the nose breaking into the brain were muffled by the screams of the Eraser in question. I grinned.

Jeb and Iggy were over by where the open grass of the field met the youngest trees of the forest. Erasers had managed to slice open Iggy's arms and chest. Jeb was in a better shape, but they were outnumbered four to two and didn't have anywhere to go.

Brushing my hands off on my jeans, I took the first step in their direction. But then I saw Fang. And Fang—

Oh God. Fang was about to die. He had been knocked down to one knee, and a deep set of fresh scars ran crimson across his chest. The Eraser standing before him raised its clawed hand for the killing blow—

And I slammed into it, knocking us both to the ground. It snapped at me, but I dodged. It was off-balance, lumbering and thrashing. Easy to subdue. I clambered on top of it and pinned it to the ground.

It snarled at me and tried to push itself up. I punched it in the face. Close-distance, short swing. It hit the ground. Blood dribbled out of its mouth to stain the grass. It didn't move.

I glanced over to Fang. The cuts across his chest were bleeding heavily, but I had seen worse. Had been through worse.

Fang met my eyes and nodded. He'd be okay.

As I exhaled in relief, the Eraser whose jaw I had just broken sat up and slammed into me. It punched Fang back and out of the way and knocked the two of us to the ground. A hot and heavy hand around my throat pinned me to the dirt, and another held my right arm to the ground. I tried to fight back but it was no good. I was trapped.

The Eraser above me raised a fist. There was pain, so sharp and bright that it might have been an explosion, and then—

Blackness.

"Max! Oh my god Max Max Max wake up, you have to wake up Max please—"

I forced myself to focus on a world that seemed to be made of blurry brown blobs. It took a few deep breaths for me to be able to focus, and that meant breathing in more of the blood-tinged air. It was disgusting, but it woke me up. I opened my eyes as wide as they would go and stared at my Flock.

Fang had tugged his shirt off and tied it around his chest as a makeshift bandage, pressing his hand against the right side of his chest to staunch bleeding.

"Oh, thank god," Nudge said, and I blinked at her. The entire right side of her face was a bruise, and her eyes were bright with tears. Her arm was around Gazzy's shoulders as he wiped at his bloody nose with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

As I pushed myself to a sitting position, I saw Iggy wincing. It wasn't hard to see why—he looked like he had been attacked by a swarm of razor-winged butterflies. He was tugging at his shirt, trying to peel the cloth away from the open cuts.

Even Jeb had a broken nose, but he set it back in place without wincing. "Are you alright?" he asked me. He didn't sound angry or defeated, just tired.

I gave myself a quick once-over. The worst-off part of me was my head, and the repetitive thudding of chopper blades wasn't helping, but I would be fine.

I exhaled in relief.

And then I realized that the helicopter wasn't there anymore. And neither were Angel and Ari.

"Max," Nudge said. "Max come on we have to get—"

I pushed her off of me, stood up, and looked for the chopper. It hadn't gotten too far away—I couldn't have been out for too long. My head spun and thudded as I forced myself to stand, and for a brief second of weakness I leaned on Fang. But then I thought about Angel and Ari, and how small and defenseless they were against the wolf-monster Erasers…

"Come on, then," I snarled, and ran off of the cliff.

I dropped like a rock, arms flailing, before I snapped out my wings. They caught the air with a white-hot scream of protest in just about all of their muscles, and my metacarpus almost popped out—I had slammed that Eraser way too hard. For a moment all I could focus on was how every bit of my body was burning, but then the world returned. I could feel the wind underneath my wings and smell the fresh mountain air. My head was pounding, my muscles ached, and I could feel blood beginning to trickle from my nose. The pain nagged at me, but I grit my teeth against it.

I shot a glance over my shoulder. Fang flew behind me, his head only a meter behind my right foot. Iggy and Nudge were on my left. Nudge flew a little lower than Iggy, cupping her shoulder. Gazzy was all the way in the back, his face contorted with rage.

As the five of us gained on the chopper, I craned my neck to get a look inside. The thudding of the blades wasn't doing anything to help my head, but I could live with a little headache.

Angel and Ari were fighting back-to-back, trying to fend off the three Erasers holding handcuffs and duct tape. They were putting up a good fight, and I grinned as Angel stomped on one's instep and Ari punched another in the gut. But they were overpowered, trapped, and outnumbered. It was just a matter of time.

So I did the only thing I could do—provided a distraction. I flapped hard, getting as close to the chopper as I could. Then I stuck my fingers in my mouth and wolf-whistled. I could barely hear it, but I wasn't the one designed to have super-alert ears.

The Erasers' heads snapped to look at me. I had a split second to savor the surprise on their faces before something small and fast slammed into me, nearly knocking me into the side of the chopper.

It was Gazzy.

"Hey! Big and ugly!" He angled his body so he was flying alongside the chopper. In another second he'd be in just the right position to jump in. "Give me back my sister!"

I saw the Erasers' faces break out into toothy grins. If Gazzy went in there, he wasn't going to come out.

Gazzy had folded his wings and was about to drop in when I grabbed his ankle.

"No you don't!" I shouted.

I yanked him close and slammed my fist into his throat. I hit him hard enough for his wings to go stiff with shock and then I let him go. He dropped out of the air, his blue eyes wide with pain.

I felt like shit for doing it. But I couldn't let them get him.

By now Iggy and Nudge had caught up to me. Nudge, tears streaking down her face, grabbed onto the skids and slammed her left shoulder into one. She screamed once as the chopper shook, but didn't let go. I could see Ari's eyes go wide as he stumbled and fell back.

"Angel! Ari!" Iggy shouted. He was level with the door area now, blocking my view.

An idea flashed through my pounding mind.

"Guys!" I called. " _Jump_!"

That was when the Erasers started shooting.

The first few bullets would have hit Iggy dead-on if it weren't for Nudge. She launched herself at him and tackled him out of the air, her wings pulled in tight to her back. The two of them fell towards the ground, and I swooped toward the right, flying a bit ahead of the chopper. The Eraser with the gun snarled at me but didn't fire upwind. Instead it aimed its fire at Fang as he dipped lower in the air.

I had a clearish view of the inside of the chopper again. An Eraser was cuffing Angel's hands behind her back. She was screaming and trying to shake herself free, a cut on her cheek dripping blood onto the chopper floor. The Eraser put a hand over her mouth to try to shut her up, but she bit the hand and stomped on its instep before slamming into the gunner shoulder-first and jumping out.

The gunner fell, screaming, and Angel fell too. My eyes went wide as I saw how they had cuffed her—around the wrists and just above the elbows, so her arms were in the way of her wings. She wouldn't be able to fly. I folded in my wings and dropped to catch her, praying that I wouldn't miss. I had heard the gunner smash into the rocky ground. That couldn't happen to Angel. Not my baby, no, no—

After a horrible moment of falling alone, I had her in my arms. I held her tight and circled lower in the sky.

Our landing was awful—we skidded on the rocky ground and crashed into a bush. Its brambles ripped into my already-bruised skin.

We were covered in rock burn, bruises, and drying blood. My head still hurt, and it felt like I was about to pass out or puke. Angel was shivering like she had been locked in a freezer. But we were alive. And we were free.

"Oh, thank God," I whispered, hugging my little sister close. "Angel, Angel, Angel…" I didn't know what I would do with myself if she died.

"I know, Max," Angel whispered, and rubbed her face into my shoulder. It was the closest approximation to a hug that she could give with her hands cuffed.

That was when Fang hit the ground. He didn't _land_ so much as _fall_ , his wings folding just in time to not break them against the rocky ground. Angel and I rushed to his side.

Now that I could see him up close I knew in what bad shape he was. The shirt that he had used as a makeshift bandage had fallen off, and the blood from the claw wound had started to dry. There was so much of it that I couldn't see his skin. He'd be okay in a few hours, but right now I wasn't sure if he'd make it until then. His breathing sounded scratchy and his face was pale from wind-chill and blood loss.

I helped him stand, tugged off my T-shirt, and handed it to him. He nodded once and began to tear it into strips to use as bandaging.

"Sorry," he finally said.

That was when I realized that the sound of whirling blades was gone. The Erasers had left.

And they had Ari.

* * *

 _This was easily one of my favorite chapters to write, because of all the action. I think I was talking to FaxFiction about it for her story, Out of Sight (go read that if you haven't already): all-action chapters are so much fun. They're a bit of work, but they're SO MUCH FUN._

 _Your comments and criticism are appreciated._


	4. Shades of Black-Purple

_Much gratitude to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to everybody who's reviewing and helping me make this better. Onward and upward, guys._

* * *

"Fang," I said. "Take Angel. Remember that hiking trail that we found back in the spring? That'll dump you guys right behind the house."

Fang stared at me, his expression unreadable.

"Max, _no_!" Angel clung tightly to me.

I unfurled my wings. They ached, and even half-spreading them made me feel like they were going to seize up. But I would be fine. I had to be.

"Angel," I said, my voice as soothing as I could make it, "I have to go get Ari. You need to let go of me, and go back with Fang." I peeled her arms off from around my waist, my hands shaking. When I took a step back, the muscles in my legs burned, and I felt the jagged teeth of a bramble rip deeper into the flesh of my thigh. I tugged it out and dropped it on the ground as blood tricked down my leg.

Another step back. God, would I even be able to do a U and A? There were trees down here. They might not be the biggest, but they were still enough to get in my way—after that fight, and the fall, what would happen if I broke a wing on a particularly sturdy branch?

I guess I'd have to find out. No matter what they could do to me, no matter what I could do to myself, it wouldn't be half as bad as what they _would_ do to Ari. He wasn't even a mutant—what if they wanted him as the "control" in some freakish experiment on mutant endurance? What if they just wanted to use him for Eraser food?

I forced myself to spread my wings fully, and readied myself for the jump up into the air. U and As weren't the easiest thing to do—I had come close to breaking bones while learning. I had been in better shape then, too.

Before I could leap up, Fang strode forward and grabbed my wrists in his hands. His jaw was set and his eyes were bright, and even though his grip wasn't as strong as it could have been, there was still some steel in it.

"Get off," I snapped. "Go back to the E-shaped house. You need to stop that." I gestured at his chest with my chin. We heal super-fast, yes, but he could still bleed out before then.

He let go of one of my wrists and touched a particularly nasty scrape near my temple. I hissed and stepped back, but he followed me.

"We go back together," he said.

"But—"

Angel cut me off. "I can't hear them. They're gone, Max. Ari's gone."

"I—" I swallowed down the retort on the tip of my tongue. "Okay."

The walk back home was the longest I'd ever taken in my life. Every single muscle in my entire body had been stretched, torn, or bruised. But worse than that were the angry tears starting to my eyes, the lump in my throat, and the knowledge that I was a hair's breadth away from flying completely off the handle and bursting into sobs.

I had a hand on Angel's shoulder. Whenever she stumbled—which happened quite a bit—I'd hold her steady. Fang was leaning heavily on me, his hand pressed up against the makeshift bandage wrapped across his chest. None of us spoke.

When we got back, Jeb had pulled out our first-aid gear—bandages, boxes of antiseptic wipes, needles and thread, and gauze—and spread it out over the kitchen table. He was alone, and my stomach dropped when I realized that the other three weren't home yet.

Fang unslung his arm from around my shoulders, grabbed a needle and thread, and headed off towards the bathroom.

Jeb looked at me. I had never seen him like this. He didn't look _adult_ ; he looked _old_. Concern was etched into the lines on either sides of his eyes. "The others?"

I swallowed. "Gazzy—I'm worried that he might have gone off after the copter. Nudge and Iggy went down together. They might have met up, and…" The headache was gone now, but my legs were still throbbing. I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down gingerly. "But Fang lost a lot of blood and Angel's arms are still cuffed."

My decision to head back had been based on what I knew. _Lead with your head, not with your heart_ , Jeb always said. But just because a decision made sense didn't mean it was right. My stomach twisted as I thought of Gazzy in a cage, of Nudge's body ripped apart by teeth and claws, of Iggy dead from innumerable bullet wounds. Fresh adrenaline flooded my system and I forced myself up again, ignoring the soreness in my legs and wings. I pushed past Jeb and Angel, headed outside—

Only to collide with Iggy as I opened the door. Gazzy and Nudge were behind him, and all of them looked like crap. Iggy hadn't lost as much blood as Fang, but he was still a mess. Blood was dried into his strawberry-blonde hair, smeared over his jawline and neck, even visible on his arms where the Erasers' claws had cut open his sweatshirt. The side of Nudge's face and the front of Gazzy's throat were only slightly different shades of black-purple. And all three of them were covered with the cuts and scratches that came from falling into a forest from above.

I had never been so glad to see them. "Gazzy—" The word tore itself out of my throat. "Gazzy, I'm sorry. But I had to. I couldn't let them get you."

Gazzy swallowed. Tears started to his eyes but he wiped them away. "Yeah."

"We tried to follow them, but we got into the air too late and they were too far away," Nudge said, talking through split lips. She spat out a mouthful of blood and kept going. "They were going fast, like over a hundred miles an hour, and they had a head start and—"

Iggy put a hand on her shoulder and she took a deep breath in. Tears started to her eyes.

"Are Angel and Ari okay?" the Gasman asked.

It felt like the Eraser had tackled me again. All the breath went out of my lungs when I saw the look on his face. He didn't _know_. We had come so close, and failed, and he didn't know.

A metallic jangling stopped me from having to answer that question, as Angel pushed past me and threw herself at Gazzy, hugging him tightly. Jeb must have gotten out the bolt-cutters from Iggy's room, because the chains in-between her cuffs had been snipped, leaving her with two sets of evil-looking metal bracelets.

"Come in," Jeb said. "We'll need to get you fixed up."

Nudge shrugged as she stepped in, with Iggy, the Gasman, and Angel following. "I'm fine, really," she said, her mouth dripping blood onto the wood floor. "But we should look at Ari. He heals worse, right?" She raised her voice. "Hey Ari, are you still okay from that kick in the side you got?"

"Ari's still kidnapped," I said, the words feeling like every punch to the stomach that I ever had.

Iggy spun on his heel and headed out, unfurling his wings as he went. I hurried after him, my legs aching with every step.

As he leapt into the air, I grabbed at his arm and yanked him back down.

"Look," I said. "I know how you feel. Really, I do. But you're just going to get yourself killed going after him. You literally can't see it coming, and you're already a bloody mess. I—"

 _I can't lose you, too_. That's what I would have said. But the words didn't come out.

"At least I'd be doing something," Iggy retorted. He tried to tug himself free, but I hung on. "Let me go!"

Just as I was about to ask him who the hell he thought he was, Fang inserted himself between us. He had tugged on a black flannel shirt before heading out, and he was holding an icepack to his lip. His dark eyes burned with something I couldn't recognize.

He stared at each of us for a long moment. I fidgeted. Somehow he had a way of making all of my not-very-well-thought-out decisions seem… well, just like that. I realized how stupid I was being. The kids were in the E-house. The Erasers were gone. Ari was on his way to the School. I wasn't going to be able to stay on my feet for another hour, and I reeked of dried sweat and blood.

"Sorry," I muttered to nobody in particular. "This just sucks."

Fang nodded once.

"Sorry," Iggy said to me, arms crossed over his chest.

Fang turned on his heel and headed back inside, and we followed.

Getting fixed up took longer than I had wanted it to. Bruises had to be iced, clothes had to be changed, and cuts had to be cleaned and bandaged. We had to eat, too. Even though none of us had anything resembling an appetite, our metabolisms were screaming at us for fuel to repair our battered bodies. And through it all I had to listen to Nudge's unending monologue. The ice pack that she was holding to her mouth wasn't enough to muffle her nervousness-induced word vomit.

"—so I guess we could steal a car and just _go for it_ , but none of us knows even how to _drive_ a car, no Gazzy watching Grand Theft Auto LP's doesn't count, and besides, how would we get gas money? Also like how would we get into the School, could we just _bam_ drive the car into the side of the building, but don't they have security guards after nine-eleven for stuff like that, also like Jeb I'm really sorry that we let Ari get kidnapped, we should have done better, _I_ should have done better, but one of the Erasers punched my shoulder loose and when I took off it popped out, and then they had _guns_ in the copter. And I was so scared and I wasn't really thinking when I tackled Iggy, but I would take alive-Iggy and captured-Ari over dead-Iggy and maybe-still-captured Ari oh my god that—"

"Shut up!" Angel shrieked. Iggy, who was cutting off her handcuffs, cringed. The rest of us flinched and stared at her silently.

She kept going. "I know you're scared, but stop being so loud. You're giving me a headache and everybody else is freaking out. So either think of something useful to say, or keep your mouth shut."

Tears welled up in Nudge's eyes. She stormed off to the room she shared with Angel, slamming the door behind her.

Fang, holding an icepack to a scratched-up shoulder and playing with the cap to a gallon jug of orange juice, frowned. "We're not stealing a car," he said.

"She's kind of right," Iggy said. "We do need a plan."

I nodded and took a deep breath. Time to be a big damn leader. "Fang, Nudge, and I will go to California. You three stay back with Jeb and keep the house safe. We'll meet up with you, and then—"

Jeb cut in. "We'll get on the road as soon as you three get back with Ari. It won't be safe to stay here anymore." And then he turned and left, heading for the ladder that led up to his study/bedroom in the attic.

" _What_?" Gazzy protested. "I can come along! Ari's my friend!"

"Gazzy," I said, trying not to snap at him, "you're really tough and a good fighter, but you're also a kid. They'll eat you for lunch."

Angel crossed her arms over her chest. "I can read minds. I'd be the best choice for helping Ari get out."

"Yeah," I said. "But the School is going to be… a lot of miles away. Like six hundred. We're going to be logging major hours, and I need somebody who can keep up."

What I didn't say was: _And I don't think I could handle losing you_. Because a sick little part of my heart was glad it was Ari that had been kidnapped, and not her. Angel could read minds, and, like the rest of us, she was one of the rare successful experiments. And while I didn't want to imagine what the School would do to Ari, I could remember everything that they had done to me when I was her age. The truth was that I loved her the most, more than anybody else in the Flock or on the planet, and it would kill me if the School got her.

"And, Iggy," I said. "I'm—"

"Don't give me any of that bullshit," he snapped. "It's because I'm blind."

"Fine," I snapped back. "It's because you're blind." And with that, I stomped off to my room. "I'm going to go pack. Fang, Nudge, you too."

My room was exactly the way I had left it in the morning, bed unmade and clothes strewn across the floor. That somehow made it worse. Because Ari had been here a few hours ago, had been _safe_ , had been _fine_. The only problem then was his complete lack of talent at checkers.

And now he had been kidnapped and the Flock was about to get split in half. I set my jaw and blinked hard, stopping the tears from welling up. I had to be strong. I had to be the leader. I had to be the one who got us out of this. Jeb was great, but he was human. He didn't get it the way I did. Didn't get _us_ the way I did.

It took me about two minutes to pack. I rolled up three pairs of jeans, five of underwear, and a couple of T-shirts. Hunted under the bed for the casualty blanket, box of matches, and pocketknife that Jeb had taught us to keep ready. I grabbed my plastic bag full of cash—it was mostly quarters and fives, and amounted to about fifty bucks. Tied my oversized bomber jacket around my waist. It was my "cover jacket," or what I would wear around normal people. Our wings fold up neatly, but they don't disappear. The jackets help. They're awkward to carry around, but they're worth it. And if we were rescuing Ari, we'd need some way of getting back to the E-shaped house that didn't involve flying. So we'd need to blend in.

I headed for the kitchen next, where I filled up a gallon jug of water and grabbed as many protein bars as I could hold.

 _Keep moving_ , I told myself. _You won't cry if you keep moving_. I bit my lip harshly.

When I headed back out into the main room, Nudge and Fang were there, water bottles already filled. Nudge's lips were still bleeding, and she didn't make an attempt to wipe them clean. She didn't even look up when I put the box of protein bars next to her.

Fang had finished packing. His backpack was on his shoulders and his black windbreaker was tied around his waist. When I handed him his box, our fingers touched. He stared at me for a long moment as he dumped bars into his bag. Finally he nodded once.

Before I could respond, Angel launched herself at me, hugging me tightly and burying her face into my side.

For a split second I thought she was an Eraser, and it took all of my self-control not to kick her in the gut.

Instead I smoothed back her hair. She was trembling with silent sobs, and it was a long moment before she choked out, "I love you the best, too," so quietly that I doubted even Fang had heard it.

Tears choked me, and for a second they threatened to spill over. "Shhh," I managed to rasp out. "Shhh, Angel, it'll be okay. We'll be okay. Stay strong until we get back."

She nodded.

I glanced around and found Gazzy, who was slumped on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Gasman, keep your sister safe."

He glared at me but nodded, and then pushed himself up off the couch and walked across the room to put his hand on Angel's shoulder.

Angel sniffled and wiped her nose on my shirt. "I'm being dumb," she said. "You're going to be fine, right?"

I forced a smile and nodded at her. "Right."

"Hey, wait a minute!" Iggy called, his voice coming from the direction of Jeb's room. "We have stuff."

In a moment, they clambered down the ladder, stacks of manila folders clutched to their chests. Iggy dumped his armful onto the couch; Jeb placed his neatly on the floor.

"Okay," Iggy said. "One of these papers is important. I'm not exactly sure which."

Jeb pursed his lips and picked up a file from the couch. "Maps and plans of the School," he said. He rifled through the piles before handing me another folder. "Maps of the surrounding area." I must have been staring at the other files a bit too curiously, because he continued. "The rest is more of the same. I took every blueprint that I could get my hands on when I left—a lot of it was extraneous."

He handed the two folders to me.

"We'll get Ari back," I promised. I shoved the folders into my bag.

Jeb paused for a moment before he said anything. "Max, you're a strong, capable leader. I trust that you'll make the right choices. As long as you don't let yourself get too hot-headed, you'll be fine."

From his spot by the door, Fang nodded agreement.

"You're a jerk," Iggy said. "But you're our jerk. Get back safe." He nodded in Fang's general direction, punched my arm, and hugged Nudge before heading off to his room.

Angel let go of me and took a step back. "You're going to be okay," she said. "Even if it's a dumb idea not to take me."

Gazzy looked at Nudge, at the hand-sized bruise that was beginning to yellow around the edges. "You'll be okay, right?"

Nudge nodded, wiped her bloody mouth on her sleeve, and said the shortest sentence that she had said today. "Let's do this."

Fang, Nudge, and I strode out of the door into the afternoon sunlight. And after a running start and a jump, we were off, flying away from the only home we'd ever known.

* * *

 _1\. What's really interesting from a writer's perspective is Fang's presence in the story. In TNTS, we're four chapters in and Fang has spoken nine words. Three of them are in a six-years-before intro. Here's a quick list of Fang's dialogue:_

 _—Are you okay?_

 _—Helicopter._

 _—Sorry._

 _—We go back together._

 _By any other right, a character with such little verbal presence would be all but ignored. But here Fang is very much visible, and an important part of the story. That means that I have to find another way to make him relevant and help make his character and personality visible to the audience. The way that I do that is by making people aware of him—through his relationships with his family (especially Max), his body language, and his actions. Please let me know what you think of his presence in the story!_

 _2\. KLoves2Read mentioned that my poor chapter-to-chapter transitions made for "abrupt chunks," so I tried to fix that up and I'll be paying more attention. I'd really appreciate if y'all could tell me how the ch03-ch04 transition works in comparison to the ch02-ch03 transition, and what you think I could improve._


	5. Clear Blue Optimism

_Much thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster._

* * *

"With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

* * *

Flying is, without any exaggeration, the best thing in the world. Food? Doesn't come close. Fighting? Can't touch it. Sleeping? No way. Not to say that eating chocolate, kicking ass, and taking naps aren't fun. They are, but they don't have the wild freezing freedom that soaring through the air does. The wind whipping at my hair and feathers, the steady burn of my muscles, and the view of the ground, a mess of brown and green partially hidden by the mist of clouds—they're my favorite things ever. They even made up for the windburn numbing my face, the chafing weight of my backpack against the base of my wings, and the ache of my battered body as I forced myself to go as fast as I could.

Because even though Ari was completely human and not really blood-related to any of us, he was still our family. And the School was still a hellhole full of psychotic whitecoats. Ninety miles an hour wasn't fast enough.

Evidently Nudge didn't think so. Without warning she moved from her spot behind my left wing to fly alongside me. She flapped up, knocking our wings together. I sighed. That was our sign for _slow down_ ; _we need to talk_. God knows she had used it enough.

But she had come up with good points previously. Nudge was a lot of things—motormouth, fashionista, drama queen, and bookworm. But she wasn't stupid or malicious. So I slowed down and raised an eyebrow at her.

"So I was thinking," she started, raising her voice high enough so I could hear her over the wind. "And I was kind of wondering why they took Ari in the first place? I mean like they had _guns_. They could have shot all of us and, like, let us die. Or they could have been, like, _put the kids into the helicopter_ , you know? Like threatened us with the guns and then we wouldn't have—"

She stopped talking when I gave her a pointed stare.

"I'm just saying, I don't get it," she muttered.

Fang swooped up beside me and glanced from me to Nudge and back. I shrugged at him, and he nodded once.

"But anyway," Nudge continued, "I'm wondering if we have a plan? I think we could go to the news people and say _look, they did this to us, and we're just kids_ , and then the news people would go to the police and shut the School down, and then we'd take Ari and the other mutants and, like, go on television and raise awareness about, like, mutant kids, and why people shouldn't put us in cages, and that way Iggy and Gazzy and Angel—"

I cut her off. "Have you ever heard of Area 51?" Her face fell, and it was like watching Bambi's mom die. I sighed. "I'm not saying it's a bad idea, just that it wouldn't work. Why don't you fly up ahead while Fang and I work on a plan?"

She scowled, but headed off anyway.

Fang and I flew in silence while I mulled over our options. The School was a death trap. We had blueprints and floor plans, but for all we knew there had been major renovations since Jeb took us out. We had maps, but it wasn't like we couldn't carry Ari for however long it took to get out of the immediate area. Of course it would hurt, but it would work. So essentially, all the information we had was useless. Which meant that we were on our own.

"I say we kick in a window, swoop through the hallways, grab him, and fly like hell." I angled myself so I was flying directly over Fang, our wings moving together. This way we could talk without shouting at each other. And, if I wanted to, I could reach down and touch his dark hair. Not that I would want to, of course. "Thoughts?"

For a long moment he was silent as we flew in tandem.

"Plexiglas," he finally said. "Narrow hallways."

I sighed, annoyed but unsurprised. This was Fang, after all. It was his _job_ to be the Debbie Downer of the Flock. "Do you have any ideas?" I asked him.

"It's going to be harder without Iggy," he said.

My stomach twisted. When the cards were on the table, Iggy was one of our best fighters—not as good as me, but about as good as Fang. He was tough and smart and capable, and I trusted him more than I trusted Jeb. But he was blind, and they had guns. He'd be a liability at best and dead meat at worst. I didn't want anything bad to happen to _anybody_. It was bad enough that Ari was captured.

They had done awful stuff to us at the School. They would have us run on treadmills for hours at a go, put us in wind tunnels to force us to fly, have us fight against each other and fully-grown Erasers… and now they had their hands on Ari. We could get there in about seven hours, and break in once we got there, but they could do a lot of damage before then.

"And we'll need to rest," Fang said. "Get more food, refill on the water, sleep."

I pushed down forcefully on the next downstroke, whacking our wings together. My metacarpus jarred at the contact.

Fang glared up at me, and I scowled down at him.

He was right, and that was the worst part. We had barely been in the air for a half hour and I had already eaten two protein bars. Flying burns calories like nothing else. And since we already need to eat more than the average person just to break even, we're pretty much always hungry when we're in the air. To date, my longest flight was five straight hours, and I had passed out at the end of it.

But Ari didn't have time to wait for us. And it would already be hard enough to break into the School. Speaking of which…

"Do you think I did the right thing, leaving Iggy behind?" I asked Fang.

He shrugged. It was kind of hard to tell, because his shoulders were already moving slightly with his wings, but this was Fang. He had a very distinctive shrug. Several very distinctive shrugs, actually, seeing as shrugs and stares were his main method of communication. But after I stared at him, he relented and spoke. "Iggy'd hold us back. But he's one of our best strategists."

"That's not an answer," I said.

Another shrug. "You did what you thought was right. You're the leader, you call the shots."

Once again, he was right. This time, he was right in a way that should have made me feel better, but didn't. I had done the right thing—as a leader. But Iggy was my friend and my brother.

"So then…" I bit my lip before continuing. "Not as a leader." I wouldn't be one forever, after all. This was a temporary thing. Maybe when I was older—like, eighteen—if we were still alive then, I'd take over from Jeb. "As Fang and Max, did I do the right thing?"

Fang answered immediately. "Yeah."

He folded in his wings and dropped for a few feet before soaring up to join Nudge. I was left behind, but I caught up easily, a smile beginning to tug at the corners of my mouth. Yeah, Ari had been kidnapped, and the Flock was split in half. And yeah, even when we got him back we wouldn't be able to go back home. But right now the wind was pushing me up and the sun was shining, I had Fang by my side, and I was on-track to save my little brother.

Nothing could bring me down.

* * *

 _I am really sorry for missing a week. There was a communication fumble with my beta that lead to me not getting the edited chapter until the 16th. That won't happen again.  
This chapter is mostly transitionary, moving from one part of the story to the next, featuring some minor character exploration and Fang saying more words than he has in the past four chapters combined. The next two chapters are similar-they don't have Fang, but they shift the focus of the story. And then the B-plot starts rolling at around chapter 8._


	6. Alien Sky

_I'd like to thank Tokoloshe Monster for beta-reading-she's pretty awesome._

* * *

Ari sat on the bench alongside the wall of the helicopter, his shoulders hunched. His lip was aching because he had chewed on it hard enough to tear the skin. He had bitten his tongue a few times too, when the helicopter had shifted. And there was a bruise on his stomach that was throbbing, and his right eye was so bruised that he couldn't even open it. But the worst bit was how cold it was. Gooseflesh had begun to rise on his arms and he was unable to stop himself from shaking.

It was stupid that he was getting so scared. They had guns, they had shot at the Flock, and god only knew if Max and Iggy and Nudge were okay. Gazzy had been within an arms-reach of the Erasers before Max pulled him out of the sky. And Angel might have broken half the bones in her body if she hit the canyon floor. Really, compared to the rest of his family, Ari had it easy. All he was doing was going to the School. He wasn't going to die—and if he could hold on, the Flock would come get him. So why was he about to cry like a little kid?

 _Because there's no "only" about the School_ , he realized. The older three all had horror stories, scars from cattle prods or Eraser brawls, reasons why they flinched at loud noises. Even Nudge would sometimes stumble to breakfast with her eyes red from crying, and hug Gazzy and Angel tightly before making herself a cup of tea. Sometimes Max would be persuaded to tell the younger kids what was so bad about the School, exactly, and whenever she did Ari and Gazzy would have to stay up until the next morning to avoid nightmares. Ari's breath hitched as he thought about the stories about kids with holes in their throat because they had been forced to swallow radioactive dye, kids whose hearts gave out on the treadmills, kids who got ripped to shreds by Erasers while they were still alive. That was where he was going.

At least the Erasers had cuffed his hands in front of them when they had stopped for fuel half an hour ago. Ari pulled his knees up to his chest from between his arms. His nose had started to run and he wiped it with his T-shirt, biting down on an already-gnawed lip to stop himself from trembling.

The female Eraser sitting across from him shifted in response. She had been watching him since Angel had gotten out. Just sitting and watching, with her arms folded across her chest. She wasn't the only one doing so, but she was one of a few. Most were tending to their wounds. There was a knot of three who were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, the guys on the side helping to splint the broken arm of the girl in the middle. The Eraser sitting next to Ari had been one of the ones that he and Nudge were fighting, and the one who had grabbed him and bundled him into the helicopter. She had wrapped gauze around a sprained wrist and was daubing antiseptic onto the bites along her forearms that Ari had given her. Two others were completely unscratched, sitting by the door. One of them was drumming on the floor with a well-worn combat boot.

The other was singing or at least trying to, except he had forgotten most of the lyrics.

"Counting bodies like sheep, like sheep like sheep—" Over and over again, like a broken record, to the beat of the other one's drumming on the floor. Their voices blended with the roaring of the wind and the thrumming of the blades.

Without taking her eyes off Ari, the female Eraser spoke, her voice loud enough to be heard over the noise. "Cut that out or I swear to God I will rip your fucking throat out."

The one who was singing flipped her off but didn't stop.

"Don't be like that, Vee," the drummer called.

She said something that Ari ignored. He didn't want to hear more bad words, didn't want to hear her threaten to kill somebody. He didn't want anybody to die. He just wanted to go back home. When would this be over? Even being dead would mean that he wouldn't have to wait any more. And being in a cage would mean that the worst was about to happen, so he wouldn't worry about it. He felt sick.

As if to spite him, the helicopter lurched, and he bit further into his lip. Blood began to trickle down his chin as his stomach twisted. His heart was hammering away in his chest like a rabbit fighting its way out of a trap, but he still felt ice-cold.

Instead of focusing on the world around him, he tried to drown himself in the repetitive thudding of the blades and the trembling of the 'copter. He hugged his knees and shut his eyes and waited for it all to be over.

Eventually it was. They touched down some hours later, and the two Erasers by the door marched Ari out of the 'copter with a huge hand on each of his shoulders. Their nails were sharp and narrow, more like wolf claws than even the sharpest human fingernails, and their thumbs were oddly aligned with the rest of their hands. It would be almost too easy for one to reach up and slice half his face off.

Ari looked around, trying not to move his head. He was on the gravelly roof of a building, high enough to be above the treetops surrounding it. The summer sun was still hanging in the cloudless sky like nothing was wrong with the world. It was an alien sky, its blue not quite like anything he'd ever seen before. It looked almost like water, like it would weigh down the wings of any birds that tried to fly in it. A sky that stood out against the almost dead sandy ground.

A road of dry dirt wound up a hill, only to be interrupted by a metal wall of a gate and a barbed-wire fence that gleamed silver, wrapping around the building.

A few of the wounded Erasers were joking, their voices a harsh rumble. Aside from them and the slowly fading noise of the helicopter, everything else was dead silent. It was like Ari had been lead into the world's largest tomb.

He must have been lagging, because the pressure on his shoulder increased. He stumbled, almost slicing his skin on the Erasers' claws. They were pushing him towards an elevator that stuck up against the flat roof like a buoy would against a calm sea. There was a man leaning against it, his bright orange Hawaiian-print shirt a stark contrast with the desert around him. He was smoking a cigarette that he ground out with a sandaled foot.

The man strolled over, his hands in his pockets. He was maybe as old as Jeb, except his hair wasn't going gray at the temples. And the School didn't let normal people hang around, so this man had to be a whitecoat, except he wasn't wearing a lab coat. He was grinning with the same easy, relaxed smile that Iggy had when he was cracking a joke or winning at Monopoly, and his suntanned skin was only a little lighter than Max's. Didn't whitecoats stay inside all day, experimenting on kids? That was what Max had said, and Iggy had agreed with her.

"What the hell're you doing?" the maybe-not-a-whitecoat asked. He was addressing the Eraser on Ari's right, but he didn't sound scared at all, even though the Eraser was like half a foot taller than him and had death claws and teeth like railroad spikes. He didn't sound angry, either, even though he was swearing.

"What is it, sir?" the Eraser asked. He was the one who had been drumming.

The man rolled his eyes and jerked his chin toward Ari. "Care to explain why you had to put handcuffs on a—" He paused to gaze down at Ari for a moment. "—five-year-old?"

"I'm _seven_ ," Ari protested. The words slipped out before he realized how scared he should be of somebody who an Eraser called _sir_.

"Alright," the man said, "A seven-year-old. Him being two years older really made a difference when it came to kicking your asses?"

"Dr. Howard, sir?" This voice came from the Eraser called Vee, back with the others.

The man glanced over to her. "Yeah?"

"He and his sister put up a fight, sir," she said. "The girl escaped and managed to off Raoul. We—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up," Dr. Howard said. "You're telling me that the—one, two, three, hmm, _eleven_ of you couldn't keep one wingless kid in a confined space without breaking out the 'cuffs? Goddamn. That is a crying shame." He walked up to Ari.

Ari, still shaking, stared at him for a long moment. The Erasers lifted their clawed hands from his shoulders.

He took a step forward, and resolved to bite Dr. Howard as hard as he could and then run as fast as he could as soon as he saw a cage. Because there was going to be a cage, and a bunch of dead kids, and tests, and—

"Toss me the 'cuff keys, would you?" Dr. Howard called. An Eraser complied, and a jangling flash of silver flew through the air. Dr. Howard caught it neatly and tucked them into one of the pockets of his khaki shorts. "I'll take the kid downstairs," he said. "You'll probably think he's walking too fast and break his kneecaps. Wait for the elevator to come back and head to the med bay. Come on, kid."

His legs had gone numb, and his hands were shaking hard enough to rattle his cuffs, but Ari walked to the elevator and kept his mouth shut.

Once the doors had slid shut and the two of them began to descend, Dr. Howard dug into his pocket and handed Ari the handcuff keys. It took Ari a long moment of fumbling, but his hands were finally free. Dr. Howard pocketed the cuffs as the doors dinged open.

A white linoleum-tiled hallway stretched out before them, illuminated by fluorescent bulbs. The smell of antiseptic, cold and burning, was almost overwhelming. Ari flinched. Suddenly he wished he were back in the copter again, listening to Erasers swear at each other. Almost unconsciously he stepped back until his shoulders were pressed up against the metal arm bar of the elevator. Dr. Howard sighed and Ari flinched again. Yeah, he had been nice so far, but there were still eleven Erasers on that roof and countless more in the School itself.

 _Don't be a coward_ , he told himself. It was what Jeb would have said. He forced himself into the hallway, his hands in his pockets. Dr. Howard took the lead, guiding them through a rat maze of turns and doors. The doors were lettered and numbered, but his head hurt too much for him to focus. Sometimes they would pass whitecoats, actual whitecoats, and Dr. Howard would nod at them. Under the bright lights and next to the white everything, he stuck out like a sore thumb.

The long fluorescent bulbs were buzzing with energy, and the walls seemed to vibrate if Ari stared at them for too long. He blinked, trying to adjust to the brightness, and kept his eyes on his feet. Off in the distance he could hear screaming, high-pitched and feral. It cut off after a wet _thud_ that sounded like a rock being thrown against a full garbage bag.

Ari clenched his hands into fists to stop them from trembling. Where was he going? Dr. Howard didn't seem like a bad guy. He wouldn't uncuff Ari just to throw him in a cage, right? But then why else was he here?

They finally stopped at a door that was, just like every other door in the building so far, white. The only thing differentiating it from the others was a small blue sticker in the center. Dr. Howard glanced at that sticker, at the incomprehensible mish-mash of numbers and letters above the sticker, and nodded.

"Here you go, kid," he said, opening the door and shoving Ari in. "Sit tight." And with that he was gone, the door shutting behind him.

Ari stumbled in, falling to his knees. They ached as he forced himself to stand up and look around.

The room was definitely not what he expected. There weren't any cages, and the lighting was less harsh than it had been in the hallway. The entire room was filled with double-decker bunk beds, neatly made. The bunks were made out of the same light brown wood that the ones in the E-shaped house were. Sunlight flickered in through a window that was reinforced with some kind of wire, creating a light square on the floor.

Ari crossed the room to sit in the square and took deep breaths. Okay. He could work with this. He wasn't in a cage and… maybe he wouldn't be? It wasn't like they wanted him. He was just a human, not good for anything. So he did what Jeb would have wanted him to do—he thought. Maybe he could be useful to the Flock and Jeb, even in here. He could find out about the School and what they were doing. It would be like _Spy Kids_ , except he didn't have any cool technology that would stop an Eraser from ripping his throat out with its claws. But when the Flock got him out, he'd be able to be useful.

But would they get him out? The thought froze his heart in his chest, and he couldn't ignore it. It wasn't like he was any good. He wasn't a strong fighter and he didn't even have wings—getting him out would be more of a chore than an actual rescue mission. And even if they did get him out, then what?

 _What are you, stupid?_ He could almost hear Max saying that, and maybe if he closed his eyes tight enough she would be sitting next to him, the sun shining off of her hair and her voice as rough as always. _Of course we're going to get you_.

Hugging himself, Ari tried to imagine that she was there. Or that Angel was there, or Nudge or Gazzy or Iggy. Or that he was back home and grounded for doing something stupid and listening to Jeb scold him. But it was a fleeting dream, barely held up by the faint warmth of the sunlight.

* * *

 _Since it will never come up again, the helicopter that they're all in is a Sikorsky S-61R. This isn't in any way relevant to the story, the plot, or... anything, really. That's just the helicopter they're in. It can travel about 600 miles before it needs a refuel and can go up to 160 mph._

 _This is the second of three transitionary chapters._


	7. Are We Growing Up or Just Going Down

_As always, Tokoloshe Monster is my beta, and as always, she is great._

* * *

"Okay," Iggy said as he finished duct-taping the second layer of cardboard in place. He raised his voice so the others could hear him. "I think I'm done."

It had been a pain in the ass and a half to fortify every single possible attack point, a process that they called "breaking down the house," especially when half of the Flock was gone. It meant that a half-hour operation took the better part of two hours. And what made it worse was that Jeb hadn't helped at all. As soon as Max had walked out of the door he had gone to get his laptop and parked himself on the couch, typing furiously. Occasionally he would shift his attention to comb frantically through the papers scattered around him. Once he had found what he was looking for, the typing would resume. It was annoying—Iggy had tripped over spare pieces of paper three times now. At least here, in Nudge and Angel's room, the plush toys weren't half as slippery.

Gazzy's voice sounded from the room that they shared. "Bomb supplies all packed!"

"Furniture boxes in the basement!" Angel called. It sounded like she was in the main room with Jeb, and she was a little out of breath. Iggy felt bad about making her haul down the boxes, some half as big as she was, down to the basement all by herself. But she had pointed out that she didn't know the first thing about organizing explosives, and that she was way too short to properly cover all the windows.

And then Jeb spoke. "Alright, time to pack up and move out."

"Wait, _what_?" Now it sounded like Gazzy was in the main room, so Iggy headed over. No point in carrying on a conversation when the four of them had to shout at each other.

"We just finished prepping for America's Next Top Bomb Shelters, and you want us to up and ditch?" Iggy asked, and sat down on the floor. There was no way of knowing if Gazzy and Angel were in the armchairs until they spoke, and he didn't want to risk messing up any of the papers Jeb had strewn all over the couch.

Jeb cleared his throat. "The E-shaped house is the first place that the Erasers are going to attack."

"The first place that they were going to attack was the place where we were," Iggy snapped. "The strawberry patch isn't exactly on our doorstep."

"I don't want to run away!" Gazzy protested. "I want to fight them! I want to fight every Eraser!"

"Iggy, Gazzy." Jeb sounded exhausted, like whatever he had been doing on his laptop was just as bad as the fight in the afternoon. "I've already lost one of my kids—I don't want to lose you, too."

Iggy felt his ears burning. "Sorry," he muttered, and Gazzy chorused it.

"It's alright," Jeb said, but the hoarseness in his voice said otherwise. "Let's go down to the cabin."

"The cabin" was one of several attempts that somebody made at living in the forest. Built from logs with thin plywood walls, it boasted one room, a fireplace, a complete lack of running water, and a small stove that was more of a fire hazard than a way to cook food. Jeb sometimes had Nudge and the kids camp down there, as preparation for the longer trips in the forest that the older three took.

Iggy took a deep breath. Standing up to Jeb, disagreeing with Jeb—it was like arguing with the Great Wall of China. Worse than arguing with Max, because Max was more like a tank. You could wear a tank down or find weak spots, but the Great Wall of China just didn't give a damn. What made it worse was that Angel couldn't even read Jeb's mind, so she didn't have any way of mediating an argument by explaining _why_ he was angry. Knowing that Jeb didn't want to lose them gave Iggy an advantage, but not much of one.

"Look," Iggy said, "it's easier to defend the E-shaped house. We're already here and all."

"Yes," Jeb said, "It'll be easier to hold out for a few hours. But that's only a few hours."

"But we don't know if there are going to be any more Erasers! It's evening now, and Ari was kidnapped like… six hours ago. If there were backups they would have shown up by now."

"They could be waiting for us to drop our gua—"

"Jeb's right," Angel said. Her voice was very small. "I can hear them. Their thoughts. At the edge of my range. A big nasty ball of anger and hate and… bad rap music."

Iggy turned to the sound of her voice. "How much time do we have?"

She was silent for a moment, but he could hear fabric rustling as she fidgeted. "If they're that far away… the area is mostly empty too… they're like ten miles away. They're moving slow because they're trying to find this place."

Suddenly Iggy appreciated the long summer days he and Fang had spent painting and repainting the roof until it was the same brown as the ground. It wouldn't buy them much time, but the Erasers would probably have to land the copter and search on foot. But on the other hand…

The cabin in the woods was surrounded by trees, and Nudge had gone so far as to saw off a few young branches and attach them to the roof, so at a glance it was almost impossible to pick out the roof. At least that's what she had said.

Iggy sighed. "Sorry, Jeb. Let's go to the cabin."

"Everybody go grab your packs," Jeb said. Their backpacks, packed full with spare underwear, iodine for purifying water, matches, twine, dried apricots and beans, and hoarded cash, were meant for cabin weeks or long trips through the woods. Setting them up was an integral part of breaking down the house. Iggy had made sure to always keep a smaller version of his toolbox ready in his room, and he managed to squeeze that in, too. Even if they were going down to the cabin, that didn't mean that they couldn't defend themselves.

As they headed through the forest, Iggy focused on the way the ground felt beneath his boots. The problem with these woods was that no matter how well you thought you knew them, there was always another path that you hadn't taken yet, a different way of going from point A to point B. He couldn't afford to slip and fall.

"Hey, Angel," he said. "How's it going?" As the youngest, she had the least experience with the forest. And as Gazzy's little sister, she had seen plenty of horror movies, a fair number of which took place inside forests.

"It's holding up okay," she said. "There's a deer like fifty feet away but I can't feel it with my telepathy, which is really weird. Hi deer!"

"Wait," Gazzy said. "Does that mean that there could be bears here and you wouldn't know? Like, giant killer bears."

Angel started walking faster. " _Yes_."

"There are no giant killer bears," Jeb said. "Gasman, you need to stop watching movies that are too old for you." This, at least, was familiar territory. Like this, it was easy to pretend that they weren't walking around defenseless while Erasers searched for them.

"But Ari got kidnapped by a helicopter full of giant killer _wolves_ ," Gazzy protested. "And I saw that happen."

"They were Erasers," Jeb said. "Not giant killer wolves. This isn't a comic book or a movie. And giant killer bears don't exi—"

A dry branch snapped under Iggy's foot, and Gazzy and Angel shrieked. Jeb shushed them, and they stayed silent until inside the cabin.

The cabin itself was in good shape. No mildew, no raccoons, no rotten carcasses stinking up a storm… the only problem was that the tiny windows barely let in any fresh air.

"Angel," Jeb said, "I want you to tell me when the Erasers show up at the E-shaped house."

The floorboards creaked as Angel sat down. "They haven't found it yet," she said.

"Home sweet splinters," Iggy said, and dropped his pack on the floor. "Gasman, let's build some explosives."

"Awesome!" Gazzy unzipped the duffel bag used for storing equipment and started pulling out the plastic boxes that they used to store individual parts and pieces.

The two of them fell to building. Bombs weren't actually that hard to assemble, even if you were blind. A while back they had sat down and drilled themselves—how to assemble a bomb, how to take apart a watch and put it back together again, how to fix a TV. And Iggy, on his own, had spent hours fiddling with locks, getting them to line up the way he knew they could. So even though Iggy's heart was racing, his hands were steady. It was reassuring, the knowledge that a home could be protected. That a cabin could be safe.

Iggy finished smoothing the tape over a matchbox bomb. "I think we're out of supplies." They had amassed a decent arsenal, maybe even enough to get themselves out of this. He went about divvying up the bombs. Most would go back into the bag, but there were some that they should keep out.

"Can we set up tripwires?" Gazzy asked. "Can we wait outside in the trees and when the Erasers show up, we bomb them?"

"They found it," Angel announced.

" _Shit_ ," Iggy muttered. And then, remembering the two kids in the room—"Oh. Sorry."

"Let's go up there and wait until they're in the house and _blow it up_ ," Gazzy said.

"We are not blowing up the E-shaped house," Jeb told him. "But… going up there does sound like a good idea. You two, go ahead and see how much damage you can do _without getting caught_. Angel, you're staying back here. They probably have reinforcements, and I want you to keep me posted on those."

Iggy nodded. He grabbed the duffel bag, still partially filled with their non-explosive trap setups, and started loading the bombs into it. Years of experience kept his hands steady, but he wasn't stupid enough to not be scared. He was barely fourteen, and blind to boot. An Eraser could rip him in half if it felt like it. The only advantage he had over them was a superior knowledge of the land. That, and a shitload of explosives.

The two of them headed out into the forest. The summer sun hadn't set yet, but mosquitos had begun to come out in full force. And it was still hot out, too—hot enough for sweat to stick Iggy's hair to the back of his neck, hot enough for everything to feel unreal. The drying needles of evergreen trees let out a smell that would have been pleasant if it weren't so suffocating, and Iggy flinched with every crunch of a footfall against the ground. Even though, technically, it wasn't his or Gazzy's fault that dried leaves made this much noise… it was still worrisome. So he kept the pace slow and steady, to the point where it took them twice as long to go from the cabin to the E-shaped house than it did to go the other way.

"This is stupid," Gazzy muttered. "We should just charge at them. They took _Ari_ , I want to get them back."

Iggy nodded. "Same here." Revenge, no matter how clichéd or poorly-thought-out, would always be satisfying. Especially when it was revenge on the monsters that dragged him down a hallway to get his eyes cut open. Especially when his little brother's life was on the line. "But we can't. I don't want you getting hurt, okay? Let's see what we can do about tripwired bombs, and then let's get back."

"But-" Gazzy started to protest.

"But Angel," Iggy said. "If we do something stupid and get caught, then she's going to be the only winged kid in the area. And besides." He reached out, found Gazzy's shoulder. Moved his hand to the kid's head and ruffled his hair. "You're my little brother, okay? Don't waste your life on something as dumb as this. At least see one PG-13 movie in theaters." He paused. "Tell you what. When we make it through this, when we're all back together again, I'll take you and Ari to the movies and we can watch the goriest horror flick there is. I'm tall enough to pass for seventeen."

"Really?" Gazzy said. "Will you buy popcorn, too?"

"Three extra-larges," Iggy promised, a pit forming in his stomach. "But you have to promise not to try to pull one over on me and get something with naked girls in it. That stuff's not for kids."

He stopped talking automatically when his foot landed on a familiar bit of flat rock. The ground had started to level off, and the tree cover was all but gone. They weren't far away now.

"Holy crap," Gazzy said, sounding very much like he had been punched in the stomach. "That is one big, ugly bug."

"Gazzy, don't pay attention to beetles," Iggy said, and walked straight into the metal side of the helicopter. "Oh."

"It's huge," Gazzy said. "At least it's huge up close. It looks big enough to hold… fifteen, twenty Erasers? And it's a stone's throw away from home."

Iggy nodded. "Time to head in."

They crept closer to the house, their feet as silent on the dry summer grass. The house itself was on top of a hill, so they crouched at the bottom of the steeper side. Close enough to hear, far away enough to not be heard.

Iggy listened for Erasers, and he wasn't disappointed. He could hear them growling to each other, hear the barks that they called laughs, hear them breaking things. There was a crunch of fist through drywall. Next to him, Gazzy grit his teeth. Iggy put a hand on his shoulder and could feel the younger boy shaking with rage.

By listening for the stomping of heavy boots on the wood floors, Iggy counted twelve Erasers. Twelve was way too many for the two of them to take in a fight. If Max and Fang and Nudge were there, maybe they would have stood a chance. But they weren't, so Iggy would have to get inventive.

The sound of a zipper snapped his attention away from any budding plans.

"Do _not_ ," he whispered to the Gasman, "Throw a bomb in there."

"There's one at the _window_ ," Gazzy whispered right back, sounding strangled with fury.

"And there are another _eleven_ in the house. That's enough to eat your arms and legs like drumsticks and still have room for more. Don't do it."

Gazzy fell silent, leaving Iggy time to think. What could they do? They hadn't built any landmines. Even if they had, it would be next to impossible to plant them. They had _one_ timer bomb. One. And it had taken them months to build. Besides, the most damage Big Boy could do would be to the E-shaped house, and Jeb had said not to damage it. That left them with tripwires, grenades, a few pipe bombs, and a two-liter Pepsi bottle filled with kerosene—and nothing to use it on.

A beetle skittered across his hand, and he flicked it away. It landed on Gazzy's face, and the younger boy flailed.

"Get this fricking bug off of me!" His voice didn't rise above a whisper, but his thrashing made noise. Fortunately he managed to get the bug away before an Eraser noticed them. He spat on the ground in disgust. "Stupid ugly bug."

Iggy's eyes went wide. "Gazzy, you're a genius!"

"Huh?"

Iggy grinned. "Want to booby-trap a copter?"

It took them the better part of a half-hour to set everything up, and Iggy felt like he was holding his breath through all of it. But it got done. The tripwire was stretched across the open doorway and looped around the bottoms of the grenades. And then they super-glued the grenades to the roof by their pins.

Sometime during all this, the sun set. It was hard for Iggy to tell, but when he and Gazzy scurried out of the copter and into the woods, the air seemed cooler, fresher, without the oppressive heat and muggy humidity of daytime.

This was good—better than good. This was great. The Erasers wouldn't see the tripwire, wouldn't see the carefully placed grenades. They wouldn't see anything. Then they'd be dead and the School would be down a copter.

"Okay," Iggy said, "Now we do the responsible thing."

Gazzy sighed. "We go back to the cabin and tell Jeb what we saw?"

"Noooooo," Iggy told him. "We find a spot in the trees so we can observe the results of the experiment we just set up."

"We set up an experiment?"

Iggy nodded and started counting his paces. When they got to one hundred, he'd get Gazzy to find them a good tree to climb. "Yeah. Purpose: to blow up a huge, ugly helicopter. Hypothesis: if we put enough grenades in the helicopter, it will explode. Materials… uh… grenades and a helicopter."

Twenty-five paces away, and a burst of _noise_ went through Iggy's head. He fell to the ground, clutching at his ears. It felt like somebody was blasting white noise at him through a pair of headphones. His teeth rattled. A small thud told him that whatever was happening, it was happening to Gazzy, too.

 _-cabin! iggy gazzy-e-shaped house!_

And just like that, the noise was gone. Like it had never been there in the first place. Iggy took a deep breath in and forced himself to his feet, and then knelt over to reach out and find Gazzy. The younger boy was shaking like a leaf and whimpering. Iggy pulled him up by a shoulder.

"Take deep breaths, Gazzy," he said slowly. "Okay?"

Bit by bit, Gazzy stilled. But when he spoke, he sounded panicked. "That was Angel," he said. "She was, like, broadcasting."

Iggy nodded.

"She's in trouble!" Gazzy was yelling now. "We have to help her!"

That was when the helicopter exploded.

Iggy felt the shockwave coming a half-second before Gazzy did. He dropped to the ground, covering Gazzy as best he could. The sound of six grenades going off simultaneously was deafening. The air screamed as bits of helicopter and Eraser flew through it. Iggy, his hands clapped over his ears, felt like he was at the end of the world. A jagged piece of metal flew through the air, slicing his backpack open. It embedded itself in the ground close enough for Iggy to reach out and touch it.

When the screaming death of the explosion faded, Iggy rolled off of Gazzy, spilling underwear onto the forest floor. His ears were ringing, his head was pounding, and his heart was going at a million miles a minute. Erasers screamed, sounding much further away than they were. Probably they had lost an arm or a leg or a chunk of their stomach.

"You okay?" he asked Gazzy. He could barely hear his voice over the ringing.

"We have to get to _Angel_ ," Gazzy said. His wings rustled as he snapped them out from under his backpack. "Come on."

They leapt up into the night sky. It was easier for Gazzy than Iggy, who had to scramble halfway up a tree before he could be sure that he wouldn't smash into any large branches.

It was about a mile and a half to the cabin, flying. Iggy and Gazzy shot through the air like guided missiles, like bullets, with Iggy letting Gazzy take the lead.

"There it is!" Gazzy called. Iggy had to strain to hear him—the ringing in his ears had faded into an oddly familiar whirling.

They skidded into the ground, folding their wings in so fast that they fell flat on their faces.

Gazzy burst through the door. "Angel! Angel, are you okay?"

Iggy was half a breath behind him. "What's happening?"

Angel slammed into them both, hugging them. "I heard the explosion and I thought you died," she said. "But—I was telling you to stay away. To stay in the E-shaped house, or near it. There's another chopper, and it's coming here."

Iggy froze. "Shit cocksucking fuck lick a dick motherfuck." He slammed the cabin door shut.

"It was the _trees_ ," Angel wailed. "The stupid tree branches that Nudge had us put on the roof. They lost their leaves ages ago. It's so stupid and now we're going to die."

The whirling sound that he had heard earlier was still there, and getting closer.

Iggy knelt and wrapped his arms around her. "We're not going to die," he said, but his mind was abuzz with panic. What could they do? They were out of time and they had nowhere to run.

"Exactly," Angel sobbed. "I don't want to go back to the School."

Iggy smoothed her hair with a shaking hand, as Gazzy shifted to hug her as well. "You're not going back there," Iggy promised them both. "Jeb and Max and Fang would rather die, remember? I'd rather die, too." He had to pull the words out, like he was pumping up water from a well. Breathing was hard when the world had slowed down this much.

The whirling slowed, stopped. The copter had landed.

"Gazzy," Jeb said. "Give me that bomb you and Iggy were working on. The one with the timer and the switch."

Gazzy unzipped the duffel bag and handed over the bomb. "It's called Big Boy."

"Little pig, little pig, let us in," an Eraser crooned. Unfortunately crooning didn't work so well when you were a wolf-human hybrid that could pass for Darth Vader without trying. So it sounded more like a cat being strangled to death while trying to speak English. Iggy's mind noted all this with cold detachment, and his mouth moved without him even thinking about it.

"Go to hell," he said, feeling lightheaded and like he was about to vomit. His lips were numb. He wasn't sure if he was terrified or furious.

Jeb pressed something into his hand—a pipe bomb, from the bag. "Light this," he said, speaking quickly and quietly. "Go through the roof. Meet up with the Flock in California. It'll turn out alright, I promise."

"Jeb, what are you—"

"Go!" Jeb shouted. And with that he flicked a lighter open and lit the pipe bomb himself, tossing it through the roof as an Eraser kicked at the wooden door.

The roof exploded spectacularly, and flaming chunks of wood went flying. Iggy snapped his wings out to cover Gazzy and Angel.

Another kick at the door.

Jeb tugged Angel away and all but threw her into the air. Gazzy followed her automatically while Iggy stood frozen, still shielding himself. A stiff breeze woke him up, and he leapt into the air as a final kick shattered the door and Erasers stormed into the cabin.

The three birdkids streaked away from the cabin, headed west.

Behind them, the cabin exploded. It was objectively as much of a mess as the helicopter, Iggy could tell, but they had gotten far away enough to be safe.

A wave of hot air had all of them flapping even faster, and Iggy had to remember to not leave his siblings behind. He was grateful for the night wind and the speed that they were flying at, because it numbed his face to the point where he couldn't feel the tears streaking down it.

The cabin was gone. The forests were swarming with Erasers. They could never go back home.

And Jeb was dead.

* * *

 _And so we end the transition chapters. Tune in next week (or later this week, technically) for the beginning of the B-plot and two straight chapters of Ari POV!_

 _On an unrelated note, this is one of three planned Iggy chapters. Did you enjoy it? How do you feel about Iggy as a character and a narrator? What did you like, and what do you think I can do better?_

 _eta: Also, chapter title is from a FOB song. Specifically, "Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year." I don't own FOB._


	8. White Linoleum

_Tokoloshe Monster beta-read this chapter, for which I am very grateful._

* * *

After a while, the feeling that he was about to shake apart passed, and Ari was free to breathe again without feeling his breath hitch in anticipation of tears. He pushed himself to his feet and brushed his hands off on his bloodstained jeans. Time to get exploring.

The room itself didn't present much opportunity for discovery. The floor was white linoleum tile and squeaky. Each set of bunk beds was the same as the next, with barely any variation in how the sheets were made up. Almost all of them had identical plastic boxes underneath, filled with neatly folded clothes. Even the sheets and blankets were the same shade of navy blue. Ari tried jumping from one top bunk to another and made it, but banged his head on the ceiling. Forehead throbbing, he clambered back down to the ground and set his sights on the bathroom doors.

There were two, of course. One boys, one girls. After a moment of deliberation, he went into the boy's room. Whatever was in the girls room, it wasn't something he would want to see. Jeb had given them all "the Talk" a couple of months ago, complete with a slideshow and a highlighted textbook, and Ari was at least three-fourths positive that there were dead not-yet-babies in the trashcans.

So he went into the boys room.

The bathroom was much larger than any bathroom he had ever been in, larger even than the bathrooms in museums that Jeb would sometimes take them to. And it was completely empty. Ari glanced around. Everything was white except for the dull metal of the mirrors.

Ari walked up to one and pulled a face. His reflection was blurry, and a bit distorted around the fist- and face-sized dents. A closer inspection of both the mirrors and the floor tiles didn't reveal any dried blood. So did that mean that any fights had happened a long time ago? Or was there just a really good janitor system?

The image of an Eraser in a janitor's uniform, wringing out a mop with its weirdly shaped hands flashed through Ari's mind. "Hey, Gaz—" He started, but his voice echoing off the white walls of the empty room reminded him of where he was.

And was Gazzy alright? Ari had caught a glimpse of him falling out of the sky. Gazzy had wings, but there were tree branches, and rocks… What if he had gone _splat_ , like a bug against a newspaper? Like the Eraser that Angel managed to kill while she escaped? What if he had gotten shot?

Ari blinked away tears and tried to think of what Jeb would say. The problem was that it would be something about not worrying about something that he couldn't control, and what good would that do? "Not worrying" was all well and good when Ari didn't have to picture Gazzy's dead body. Frantically he searched to find a solution, a way to get him back on track. He hit upon one—what would Max say?

Max would understand. She'd smile her weird smile and say that she knew how he felt. And then she'd pull him into a feathery hug and offer to play checkers and they wouldn't talk about it ever again. Or at least until the next time that the both of them had nightmares at the same time. Ari swallowed a lump in his throat. Right now he would trade anything for this to be a nightmare. He'd trade anything to be having a nightmare, even if it was the one where he was the dog that ate the Flock. Would Max understand that or would she think he was weak?

Fang would think that he was weak, Ari realized. In that moment it felt as if the temperature of the bathroom had dropped by ten degrees. Ari grit his teeth. No way would he be somebody who Fang thought was weak. If Fang was Max's right-wing man, that meant that Fang was super-tough. Strong when Max couldn't be strong. Like Jeb was the right-wing man of the Flock and Ari, except he was a dad and that was kind of his job.

Ari couldn't let Jeb down. He couldn't be somebody who Fang would think of as weak. He had to be useful to make up for the fact that he was only human. And maybe, if he were good enough, Jeb and Max and the Flock wouldn't mind too much that he didn't have wings. If he figured out how the School worked, they'd have more of a reason to rescue him. And when he got back to the E-shaped house, Jeb would be proud.

Ari set his shoulders and clenched his hands into fists. He could still imagine Gazzy and Angel dead in almost a million ways, but it didn't matter. Either they were dead or they weren't. And if they weren't, then he wasn't helping anybody by freaking out. It was time to move on.

A quick sweep of the bathroom didn't reveal anything new, but it did give him the opportunity to splash his black eye with cold water before heading back to the main room, where he surveyed his options. He could go into the girls' bathroom and see if they kept anything important there, or he could head out into the hallway. It wasn't much of a choice—mostly because he didn't get to make it.

The door slammed open, and a boy stormed in. His hands were in his pockets and his shoulders were hunched. But his slouch and shuffle didn't hide how burly he was. Whoever or whatever he was, he was a lot taller than Ari. A lot stronger, too.

For a brief moment, Ari was frozen mid-flinch. But then curiosity, unbidden, won out. "Who're you?" he asked.

The other boy's head snapped up, his eyes gleaming an inhuman shade of yellow. "Who're _you_?"

Ari folded his arms across his chest. If he was going to be stupid enough to taunt a boy about four inches taller than him and easily half again his weight in muscle, he was going to fully commit to it. "I asked you first," he said.

The other boy snorted. "I guess I don't need my question answered," he said. "I'm Robert and you're just some dumbass punk." His face twisted up into a snarl. "Some dumbass punk who needs to learn a lesson."

And with that, he charged.

Ari threw himself out of the way. His feet entangled with Robert's and both of them went sprawling. For a second his ankle was wrenched so badly he thought he had broken it, but he managed to stand. Robert pulled himself up more slowly, and swung again.

Ari ducked and the blow glanced off of his head. It was like getting hit with a fastball. He stumbled again. This time this time he bumped into a bunk bed. His moment of clumsiness had given Robert more than enough time to corner him.

The boy grabbed Ari's shoulder and held him against the bunk. He grinned and balled up a fist.

Pain exploded in the center of Ari's torso. His sternum wrenched. For a horrible moment it felt like his heart had stopped—

Punch. Like a brick on a pendulum.

Ari struggled to get air in. His world had turned into stars. There were pinpricks of pain on his shoulder, where Robert was gripping, but everything else was a fuzzy gray.

Again.

"Do you think you're tough now?" Robert taunted.

Ari gasped. His chest screamed in protest. He threw out a desperate punch that glanced off of Robert's temple.

Robert snorted and his grip on Ari's shoulder tightened.

"Do you?"

Instead of answering, or trying to get more air, Ari kicked out. He would have aimed for the ankles, but he couldn't think straight. It felt like he was dragging his legs through mud. Robert didn't even stumble.

And then he was hauled back. Ari's knees buckled as he fell to the ground, his face pressed against the cool floor. He gasped for breath and bit his lip against the spike in his chest, sucked in air and forced himself to ignore how his world went black at the edges when his lungs expanded.

After five breaths he could hear over the roaring of blood in his ears. Sneakers skidded on linoleum, breath caught in snarls and gasps, and the unmistakable sound of fists hitting home filled the air. It went on for a long moment, and then there was a final skid, so sharp it was nearly a screech, and the sound of a body crashing into the ground.

Ari blinked away the black spots in his vision and forced himself to his feet. His chest still hurt, but that didn't matter. Whoever that was, they were done for now, and Robert would be—

Sprawled out on the floor. He was pinned underneath a brunette winged girl just about Ari's size. She was kneeling over him and holding him in a chokehold, hauling him up and smashing his face into the ground. She opened her wings and flapped forward, pulling Robert up as she leaned back. And then she tucked her wings in and curled in on herself, hunching her shoulders as she slammed Robert down. After the third time, there was a sharp crack. Blood began to trickle across the white tiles.

Robert howled in agony, making Ari clamp his hands over his ears, and went still. The girl clambered off and leveled a series of kicks into his side, hitting him in the ribs more often than not. Robert thrashed around, trying to get away, but she was light and fast—he couldn't evade her. Finally he gave up, going still.

That was when the girl turned to face Ari. He froze.

Her gaze reminded him of the way that Gazzy would look at half-finished projects—focused, but impersonal, like they were puzzles to be solved. Suddenly Ari felt very aware of his black eye, the way his shirt was ripped at the shoulders, and how he was leaning forward and wheezing. But even though he felt like he had been put under a microscope, it was nothing compared to the shock that was freezing him in place as he stared at the girl who had just beaten up Robert.

Aside from being around his age, she looked just like Max. From the almond color of her skin, to her golden primary feathers, to her sun-streaked hair, to the way her nose leaned a little to the left. She was a second Max. An Angel-sized Max. A mini-Max. A Max II. But Max had never looked at him like that, would never look at him like that.

Ari managed to blink. Once. And then he opened his mouth and said the words that got him into trouble in the first place. "Who're you?"

"I'm Amy," she said. Her voice was dry, impersonal. "Call me Amelia or Amaya or Amidala and you'll end up like him." She nudged Robert with a sneakered foot, making him flinch and hiss. He spat out a few swear words but didn't stand up, and Amy shrugged and headed over towards Ari.

When they were standing close enough for him to see that she and Max even had the same set of freckles across their noses, she reached out and prodded him in the shoulder. "Did butthead over there hit you in the head? Are you brain damaged?"

He shook his head.

"Are you just slow then?"

Ari managed to get out a "No."

Amy leaned in so that they were just about nose-to-nose. She bared her teeth. " _So then why are you staring at me_?" Even though her almost deadpan tone didn't change, her voice got louder. Ari stumbled back with his hands in front of him.

"I—I'm sorry, I just—you just look like somebody I know." It took him three long steps before he could say that, and even then his head was still spinning.

Amy and Max were identical, two peas in a pod. It was like the Max from Jeb's old home videos had come to life, had walked out of the TV and all the way over to California only to get herself caught by the School. She didn't look _like_ Max the way Angel looked _like_ Gazzy—with differences in hair color and face shape and feather tint. No, it wasn't that simple. She _was_ Max, not some left-behind younger sister.

How did this happen? Was she some kind of evil Max? Did the School make her so they could experiment on her? If yes, then why did they let her in here? Why not just keep her in a cage? There still were cages, right? What was up with Robert?

"Who do I look like?" Amy asked.

"Um," Ari said. "My, uh, sister. My older sister." He could feel Amy's eyes on him, sizing him up.

They looked similar enough, he guessed. Brownish hair and eyes, and they both had freckles. Max and Amy were darker, with upturned noses, where Ari took after Jeb—he sunburned easily and had a pug nose. And of course there was one major difference.

"You don't have wings," Amy said. She still looked like she was taking apart something delicate.

"My _adopted_ older sister," Ari clarified. "She does."

 _Stupid stupid stupid!_ He was supposed to be learning about the School, not telling kids at the School all about the Flock! What if she was some kind of spy and this was a test to figure out how much he knew about the Flock? What if her stopping Robert from beating him up was like that bad cop/good cop thing in the movies, and she was the good cop?

But… she was kind of a jerk. Good cops didn't usually call the person they were good-copping "slow", so it was probably okay. Whatever was going on, she might not be on the wrong side of it…

"Are you going to stand there gazing off into the distance with your forehead scrunched up or are you going to tell me your name?" Amy folded her arms across her chest.

Yeah, she wasn't a good cop. Ari glared at her. "My name is _I don't know what's going on so stop being a jerkface_ ," he snapped.

Amy shrugged. "That's kind of long. Can I call you _jerkface_ for short?"

Ari snickered. That snicker turned into a giggle, which he didn't know how to stop.

It wasn't that funny. He knew it wasn't that funny. So why was he laughing so much?

He took deep breaths and managed to calm himself down. When he brushed his hands off on his shorts, he noticed that Amy had taken a step back. Her head was tilted again, eyebrows raised, and her hands were half-balled into fists. Her eyes were darting between him and Robert, who had sat up but hadn't moved.

Ari held his hands out, palms up, and Amy nodded once. She unballed her hands.

"You okay?" she asked.

He nodded. "My name is Ari Batchelder," he said. "I got kidnapped by Erasers and taken here. I'm really confused and sc—and thanks for beating up Robert." He focused his gaze on Amy's face, trying to stop memories of being kidnapped, of being thrown into the helicopter and cuffed, from rising up like bubbles in soda. It mostly worked.

"Thanks for giving me a reason to, Ari Batchelder," Amy said, and held out a fist. Ari started back before he saw that she was just standing there, not aiming a punch at him.

"We're good?" she asked him. Over her shoulder Robert groaned as he raised a hand to his nose.

Ari fist-bumped her. "We're good."

"Alright. I can show you to the cafeteria—we have dinner at seven and that's in like five minutes. Wherever you're from, they probably won't mind if you hang around with me. And if they do, well," she shrugged. "They wouldn't have put you in here if you were going to get in serious trouble."

Before Ari could ask what that meant, she spun on her heel and headed for the door, not bothering to look back. Even though she was the same height as him, she walked a lot faster, and she was almost gone by the time he knew that he had to catch up.

* * *

 _So this is one of **two**_ _chapters that kicks off the **b-** plot of this story._

 _And now, let's talk about Max II! Because I'm technically taking some serious creative liberties with her character... except not really. We don't know that much about her in canon. In SOF the reader can assume that she's 14 chronological years old, but when Dylan comes around his existence throws a wrench into what we know about how clones in the MR verse work. Max II could have been born 14 years ago, when Jeb took the Flock out of the School, or during the events of TAE._

 _Introducing her as a part of Ari's experience at the School was something that I decided to do for reasons that will become apparent in future chapters. But one of the reasons was that Ari isn't Angel - he's not a coveted resource with psychic powers that can be tested on to learn more things about an ongoing experiment involving human-avian hybrids. So if he's not in a dog crate, what does he do at the School? Amy and Robert are part of the answer to that question._

 _Speaking of Robert! Here is his introduction. I will talk more about him and Max II and other things in the next chapter's AN as the b-plot progresses._

 _And so, questions: What did you guys think of Max II and/or Robert? What do you think of how Ari relates himself to the Flock? What do you think is going to happen next, or in the long term?_


	9. Familiar Faces

_Much thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, who unfortunately is suffering from a bad case of no-laptopitis._

* * *

As they stepped out, Ari's stomach churned. No way did he _want_ to stay back in a room with Robert, and Amy had said he wouldn't get in trouble… but this was the School. To distract himself, he turned to Amy.

"Is Robert always a jerk, or is today just a bad day?"

"Always a jerk," Amy said. "And stupid. I fight him a lot, but sometimes I fight other kids with him when they're being more stupid than he is. Which isn't usually. But then everybody makes dumb boyfriend jokes and I have to fight _them_." She held up her hands, backs up, to show Ari. Her knuckles were purple and black-blue and there was a drying smear of blood near her right wrist. The bottoms of her fingers were yellowed with fading bruises, and the skin had split between her pointer and middle fingers. "They've looked like this for almost a month straight."

Ari held out his hands for comparison. His knuckles were still close to black, but his fingers and wrists were purpling. They were pretty sensitive, but he had been in enough sparring matches that it didn't bother him. Amy whistled appreciatively. "Not bad. You said you got kidnapped by the School? By Erasers?"

He nodded.

"At least you put up a good fight," Amy said. "If I was there I woulda helped. Maybe. Did they do that to your eye?"

"Yeah," Ari said. "But I splashed some cold water on it earlier, and I think it's getting better. Plus it's been like six hours since it happened."

"If it were Robert who did it I would have held him still so you could do his," Amy offered. She paused for a moment. "And he was whaling on you pretty bad… I could still hold him if you wanted to get even."

For a split second, Ari would have said yes. But punching out Robert wouldn't fix anything, especially if Amy was the one holding him. It would just make Robert more likely to pick on Ari the next time. Even if Ari wasn't going to be here for long, he didn't want to risk getting his sternum shattered because he wanted to get back at somebody.

"No thanks," he said finally. "You already beat him up pretty bad, and I got a couple of hits in."

"Alright," Amy said, and then tugged him around a corner.

They continued down the hallway, which was a twin to the one that it had diverged from. The only difference was the large pair of Pepto-Bismol pink doors at the end of it. "That's the cafeteria."

She led him through the doors. "I'd give you a tour, but I'm hungry and I don't want the line to get any longer. So you can gawk at whatever you feel like on line."

The line was composed mostly of freakishly muscular yellow-eyed kids, but there were a couple of whitecoats there too, sipping coffee out of Styrofoam cups and chatting with each other. Whatever they were talking about, they seemed pretty agitated. Ari kept an eye on them as the line went along, but they didn't grab any kids and drag them off to be experimented. They just got a tray like everybody else and went to go sit down together. And they ate like normal people, even though they talked with their mouths full.

Ari couldn't keep his eyes off of them. Not their faces—their faces were unremarkable—but them as a unit. These were the mad doctors that had haunted at least three different recurring nightmares, the ones that Max swore that she'd beat up if she got half a chance. And they were eating spaghetti, complaining about the size of the fruit cups, and sipping one-percent.

Amy pushed a tray laden with food into his arms. "We only get an hour to eat and they don't want you wasting food."

And with that, she set off, easily weaving her way through busy tables. Ari stared after her for a moment. It was like the dinnertime crowd had swallowed her up, and she was drowning in a sea of people. He only just spotted her as she walked, and the thought of having to find somewhere to sit and eat _alone_ was what set his legs in motion as he trailed after her.

He breathed easier when he saw her heading for the back, not bothering to glance at any of the half-full tables of yellow-eyed kids. Even if Robert was just stupid, Ari didn't want to risk it. These kids looked like they could squeeze his head off like a bottle cap just by flexing their arms. He tried not to look at them.

But when Amy sat to sit down with a group of kids, even kicking out a chair for him, Ari couldn't do anything but stare. Sitting at the table were an Angel II and a Gazzy II. Angel II had her nose buried in a National Geographic, and Gazzy II was mixing the contents of his fruit cup into his spaghetti. A few tables over, Ari could make out Iggy's reddish-blond hair, Nudge's cloudlike afro, and Fang's black feathers.

What the heck was going on? Why would somebody make tiny twins of the Flock and then keep them in the School? If they were in the School, why weren't they in cages? Why weren't those weird yellow-eyed kids in cages either, and why were there so many of them? Nothing made sense, and Ari felt like the floor was about to crumble away beneath his feet.

Ari sat down, dropping his tray on the table. Spaghetti slipped over the edge of the plastic plate, but didn't go any further. "Hi," he said, forcing the word out. For what definitely wasn't the first time that day, it felt like all of the air had been knocked out of his lungs.

"Hi," Gazzy II said. "I'm Peter. Who are you? Are you trying to catch flies?"

"He's Ari Batchelder," Amy said. "He got into a fight with Robert, which makes him cooler than you."

"If spending a week coughing up your bloody lungs makes you cool, then people with pneumonia must be at the top of the list," Peter said, and turned to Ari. "How come you're not dead? What happened?"

Ari shrugged. "He was like, who are you, and then I was like, who are you, and then he tried to punch me, and then he _did_ punch me, and then Amy came in and beat him up. I think she broke his nose, too."

"I did," Amy said.

Angel II looked up from her magazine. "You were _supposed_ to get him for dinner," she said, sounding like Iggy did when Fang had blown half of that month's grocery budget on fresh vegetables—fresh vegetables that Jeb was having them grow in the garden anyway. "Now we're going to get in trouble with Dr. Johnson and it's going to be your fault again."

Amy finished a mouthful of spaghetti before responding. "It wasn't my fault last time, Wendy," she said. "It was Robert's. And that other kid's. They started it. Besides, it's not like he can keep me in trouble for that much longer. You said so, right?"

Wendy scowled at her, and then at Ari. "And I guess it's your fault this time too, isn't it?"

Ari glared right back. He had stared down Angel before, and she could read minds. Wait… could Wendy? As he stared at her, he thought: _You look just like Angel._ _My little sister can read minds and she's way more hardcore than you_.

No response. Wendy just went back to her magazine while Peter started slurping up his spaghetti. Amy's eyes flicked from Ari's face to the room around them as she peeled open her fruit cup.

Ari pointed over at the two whitecoats he had been staring at earlier. "Who're those guys?"

"The guy is Dr. Garcia and the lady is Dr. Johnson," Amy said.

Ari took a deep breath in and asked the question that had been bugging him since he saw them. "How come you guys are here?"

"Because it's dinnertime," Peter said. "Duh."

"No, no," Ari said. "I mean, like, here. In the School."

"It's something to do," Wendy said as she turned a page.

"Because we have a job," Amy announced. Her mouth was set in a line and she looked half a second away from calling Wendy something nasty.

"We're going to save the world," Peter chimed in.

Oh. Well, that kind of made sense.

"Hey, when my family comes to get me, do you guys want to come with?" Ari offered. If both groups were supposed to do the same job, then they should team up, right? "We have, like, a house and everything."

Peter snorted. "We're fine here. We don't want to go home and live with your mom or whatever."

"I don't _have_ a mom!" Ari snapped. "I live with the other kids who are supposed to save the world. And Jeb… my dad, I mean."

Peter blinked. "Really? What're they like?"

"Uh…" Ari rubbed at the back of his neck. "They're older. And you guys are bigger jerks." Maybe this wasn't true for the other three bird kids, but Ari didn't know that.

Before he could say _but you all look exactly like them_ , a buzzer sounded. Wendy and Peter picked up their trays and headed off, dumping any uneaten food in garbage cans. Ari followed, trailing Amy. The cafeteria had turned into a mess of people suddenly in motion.

The crowd swept him out of the doors and down the hall, but after that it split up some. About twelve yellow-eyed kids stuck with the bird kids as they headed back to the dorm Amy had barged into. Ari found one of the made-up beds in the corner that didn't have any boxes under it. He laid down on it on his side and watched as the bird kids and the yellow-eyed kids washed up and clambered in bed. The lights went off as the sun set, and the doors clicked in a way that probably meant that they were locked.

Ari lay curled up, staring at nothing, unable to close his eyes. What if he dozed off and at that exact moment, Robert woke up? What if Robert wanted a rematch? What if Robert _didn't_ wake up, and Ari had to sleep through the whole night? He'd have nightmares for sure, and the day had been bad enough.

Nothing made sense. He wasn't in a cage. The bird kids didn't want to leave the School. The whitecoats had been eating dinner like normal people. What was going on? Was this one of the tests that Jeb had sometimes talked about? Those seemed to be mostly Max and Fang and Iggy having to camp out in the forest for a week, or for Gazzy to have to know how to pick a lock in under ten seconds. Not getting kidnapped.

The weak moonlight had swamped the room in shadow, and in the dark it was easy to imagine Robert's eyes glowing like lanterns, his teeth bared—

Wood creaked. Ari flinched so much he fell out of bed, and barely managed to land on his elbows and knees.

"Who is it?" he whispered. Was it Robert, or one of the dogs from his dreams?

"Ari?"

It was Amy. Ari sighed in relief and stood. "Why are you awake?"

She walked out of the shadows, arms crossed over her chest. He could tell the answer before she spoke, could see it in the tight set of her shoulders and the way her eyes flicked around the room. "Nightmare," she said, and bit harshly at her lip. Even though the lighting was awful Ari could see that her cheeks were flushed with anger and shame.

Ari wasn't going to try to put a hand on her shoulder or give her a hug. He couldn't even offer to play checkers with her. He wasn't Max, and Amy wasn't him—she'd probably break his nose if he got too close. But he couldn't just do _nothing_.

"I get those, too," he told her. "It's a little bit why I'm not sleeping. So does my big sister, and… most of the kids I live with, really."

She unfolded her arms. "Really?"

He nodded.

For a moment she didn't say anything, just stared at him with her head tilted. When she did speak, she sounded less beaten-down. "Do you want to see something cool?"

"Sure," Ari said automatically, and then he thought about it for a second. "Wait, what is it?"

Amy was already headed off in the direction of the girls' bathroom. "You'll see."

Ari caught up to her. "I can't go in _there_ ," he whispered harshly.

Amy snorted. "Come on. It's only for a minute." She pushed the door open and headed in, and Ari had a second to decide whether he wanted to follow her or have it slam shut in his face.

It didn't take him a second. Amy had already beaten up Robert for him, and it wasn't like he could just ditch her after she had had a nightmare. And besides, if he found something useful he could tell Jeb or Max about it. They'd be proud.

He stepped into the bathroom.

It turned out that the girls' bathroom wasn't too different from the boys'. The biggest difference was a ventilation shaft on the far wall. It was huge—they could probably fit a Golden Retriever in there.

And they could probably fit _themselves_ in there, which was why Amy had scrambled up to the wall of the furthestmost cubicle. She was using her bare feet to grip and her slightly spread wings to keep herself steady, her face screwed up in concentration as she lifted the grate off. When she had her arms wrapped around it she leapt off of the cubicle and landed on her toes, leaning the grate against the wall.

She gestured at the now-open shaft. "You go up first," she said. "I'll give you a boost."

"I can go by myself," Ari said, crossing the room to stand next to her. It couldn't be that hard.

Amy scowled. "Yeah, that's what Jane said, and then she nearly broke her tailbone." She opened the stall door and formed her hands into a cradle. "You're going first."

Ari let her help him up, and then he scrambled into the air duct. For a horrible second both of his legs were kicking out over nothing, over empty air, and he was going to _fall_ and Amy would hate him, but then he pulled himself forward with his elbows and he was safe. He caught his breath, pressing his cheek against the cool metal of the shaft. It was freezing in the duct, and the air smelled funny.

He pulled himself forward when he heard Amy's palms hit the metal of the duct. A second later, she was behind him.

"Cool, huh?" Her voice, as dry as usual, echoed off of the metal.

Ari frowned. "Do you mean, like, the temperature, or do you mean fun?"

"Both," Amy said.

"Yeah," he said, and grinned. "What're we going to do? Just wander around?"

"No," Amy said, "We can't stay too long in here. They put weird stuff in the air to clean it, and it makes you breathe funny and pass out. So go forward and take the first right."

Ari did as she said, letting her lead him through a maze with walls that just got narrower and narrower. After what could have been five minutes or two hours of crawling on his elbows and knees, Amy tugged at his ankle.

"Look up."

Ari twisted his head as best he could and saw that there was another shaft going directly upward. It looked just wide enough for him to wiggle through, but—

"Are you going to be okay?" he asked Amy. "With your wings?"

"I've done this before," Amy said, which was kind of a yes, so Ari inched himself up the shaft, using his toes for leverage and pushing himself up with his legs. For a long, agonizing moment his world narrowed. All that was left was his breath coming in pants around his face, the beat of his heart, and the occasional terrifying slip of his foot. What if he fell? What if he crashed into Amy and they both got stuck, and they rotted in these air vents?

And then the vent leveled out and he was lying on his side, pulling himself forward so Amy would have room to haul herself up.

They continued onward until Amy directed him down another vertical airshaft—this time going straight down instead of straight up.

They exited the vent a few moments later, slipping out into a (thankfully empty) bathroom. Even though it was the men's room, Amy didn't seem uncomfortable in the slightest as she stood on the cubicle wall to re-adjust the cover to the airshaft. And when she leapt down from the wall to land lightly on her feet, she looked like she balanced on narrow ledges for a living, like a shorter version of a superhero.

Once she landed on the floor she stretched, reaching out with her arms and wings and breathing deep.

"You okay?" Ari asked. Had the narrow vents crushed her wings? Her lungs?

She half-jumped at the question, twisting away from him as she pulled her wings back in. "I'm fine." Her eyes were wide and her voice shook, and for a second Ari stared at her silently—what was wrong? Why was she so freaked out?

"I'm fine," Amy repeated, more steadily, and headed for the door. "Let's go."

Ari followed her, being careful not to get too close.

It turned out that the School at night wasn't very different from the School during the day. The hallways that they walked out into was deserted, but still well-lit, and the only indication of the time was the night sky outside of the windows. The stars were gleaming brightly, and looking at them made Ari's throat close up. It had only been a day ago when he was staring at the same night sky with Max, and now he was _here_.

Only when he blinked away tears did he see that Amy had stopped moving, her fingers resting lightly on a door. Like every other door in the School so far, it had a string of letters and numbers on it. Unlike the others, this had a red dot in the middle.

"Are we going in there?" Ari asked Amy, carefully walking up to her.

Her shoulders were set, and so was her jaw, but her eyes were softer than he had ever seen them. When she spoke, her voice was thick, like she was trying not to cry. "It won't open," she said. Her lips pressed together and she swallowed hard. "It won't _open_."

"Did you…" Ari trailed off, not knowing what to say. "Did you leave something in there?"

"It's… I'm from there," she said, tearing her eyes away from the door to stare at him. "I got trained there. Until my si- six- sik- May twenty-three. It's why I'm better than the others. Faster. Tougher." She hesitated, and then formed finger quotes. " _A bigger jerk_." Her mouth twisted around the words.

"I didn't mean _you_ when I said that," Ari protested.

She shrugged. "You're tough too, so I thought… I thought…" Her hand moved lightly against the door, like she didn't know she was doing it.

"You thought they'd take me?" Ari asked. "But I'm _human_."

Amy just shrugged. "I don't see what that has to do with anything." She rattled the doorknob one last time.

"If you want," Ari said slowly. "If you want, when my family comes to get me… you could come with. They're pretty tough, you know?"

"You said that at dinner," Amy said.

Ari folded his arms over his chest. "Well, I'm saying it again. To you."

Amy's forehead creased as she frowned. "I- maybe," she said. "Depends how good they are at rescuing you. And…"

"And?" Ari asked.

"What- what did I do wrong to make them stop training me? I don't… I was _good_. I was trying real hard, Ari, but they never told me how I screwed up." Amy's voice was small. She bit down on her lip with a harshness that couldn't have been conscious—Ari couldn't imagine anybody hurting themselves like that on purpose. "And if your family does that to me, I'll beat all of them up. I think. I don't… I don't know."

"If it helps," Ari offered, "I don't think you could. They're good fighters."

"Yeah?" Amy said.

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay." Amy was silent for a moment. "Since I can't show you the room, howsabout we spy on some scientists? I know a good spot. Nothing they say makes sense, but it's still cool."

This meant going back in the vents and hauling themselves so far that Ari's elbows started to bleed. Finally Amy tugged on his ankle and he stopped, craning his head to stare through the grate on his right.

He was looking _into a whitecoat's office_. Into Dr. Howard's office, really, seeing as he was the one sitting behind the desk. In front of him in folding chairs were Dr. Garcia and Dr. Johnson, and a third whitecoat who Ari didn't recognize. It was the third guy who was talking.

"Look, all I'm saying is that it has a lot of possibility. We've come this far, and the Director hasn't cottoned on yet and hit us with a huge bill. That's gotta count for something, right? And we've learned so much. I say we keep on doing it." He paused to take a sip of coffee from a styrofoam cup.

"You're getting people _killed_ for a possibility," Dr. Johnson protested. "Reilly, I'm sorry, but I have to object to this on the grounds of immorality. We can't just risk innocent lives to find out more about… about what comic-book superhero powers you can pull up by cut-and-pasting genomes like a third-grader after too many juiceboxes." She pressed her lips tightly together and folded her arms over her chest.

The guy named Reilly blinked. "Uh, question. Did you fill out an application for Burger King and send it to the wrong address? Get scouted while you were high?"

Dr. Johnson pursed her lips. "I don't see what your point is with these frankly offensive personal inquiries."

Dr. Howard, on the other hand, just laughed. "Kid, look. I like you. But unless we take up abducting and detoxing hobos, we're going to run up a shitload of MP's and then the fuckin' feds are going to storm us."

Ari twisted to look at Amy. "Can you hear them?" he whispered. When she nodded, he asked, "So what are they talking about?"

She shrugged, so Ari turned his attention back to the office below.

"So why not use hobos?" Reilly said. "Or we could make a withdrawal from a literal Fort Knox of stable DNA, and—"

Dr. Garcia cut him off. " _No_. Absolutely not." He added in a hissed aside to Dr. Johnson, "Sally, stop taking your interns on private trips."

She frowned. "He wasn't mine," she said softly. "You know I have more respect for our situation than to do that."

Dr. Howard groaned. "You guys," he said, rolling his eyes, "are being so boring right now. Right, Reilly?"

"Um," Reilly said, "right, sir."

The suntanned man continued. "Reilly was right, about earlier-we haven't gotten a bill. Y'wanna know what else we haven't gotten?"

"Results," Dr. Garcia said.

Dr. Howard snorted. "A, a, a fuckin C 'n D. Nobody's told us to _stop_. And I'm guessing it's because an open file, no report to submit, no lost bodies or experiments to report."

"Right," Reilly said, "so if we use—"

"We are _not_ ," Dr. Garcia snapped. "Going to use—"

"Jesus fuckin' christ," Dr. Howard groaned, "will both of you chill? I'm outlinin' the situation, Dante, not saying that we go out on a limb and waste good, secret, super-illegal outside corporate sponsorship money on a half-ass plan. But the kid's got a good idea in his head, and it's worth looking into. Especially if it works and the product isn't, how do you say—"

Amy tugged at Ari's ankle.

He twisted around to face her, only to see that she was backing up, headed away from him. He followed her, blinking away the black spots that had begun to spin in his vision. As Amy twisted herself around and lead their way through the vents, Ari found that it was getting tougher and tougher to breathe right. He didn't notice the funny taste of the air anymore, not really. His skin felt different too, kind of tingly, like he was getting stabbed with a bunch of tiny needles.

And then a gust of air normal air, which was stifling in comparison, hit him in the face. Amy had removed the grate to a vent and headed out. Ari followed, clinging tightly to the edge of the shaft as he lowered himself feet-first onto the wall of the bathroom stall. His head spun so badly that he couldn't land right and had to settle for a more ungraceful approach—clutching to the edge he was balancing on and letting his legs slip free, before lowering himself to the ground.

Amy's hand was on his arm as she eased him against the wall. "Breathe," she said. "Inhale, exhale. Come on."

Ari did as she said, his head slowly clearing, and found that Amy was staring at him the same way she had in the afternoon, when they had first met. He met her gaze, and she nodded once.

"I'm sorry," she said. "You're human, you don't have—" her hands went to her sides, ran up and down them as she hunted for the word "—air sacs, you don't have air sacs. And your oxygen fil-tray-shun isn't optimal. Like ours."

"Ours?" Ari croaked, and then he looked away from her and saw that he wasn't alone in the bathroom. Nudge II was there, wearing sneakers and jeans underneath her nightgown.

And her forehead was scrunched up as she glared at Amy, arms folded over her chest.

"Do you just want to get in trouble?" she demanded. "After I nearly get caught going out with you, you get in _two_ fights with Robert and drag the new kid through the vents! You can't just do dumb stuff because you _like_ people, you'll get hurt!"

"I don't like him!" Amy protested. When Ari stared at her, hurt, she clarified. "I mean, I like him, but I don't, like… it wasn't like with you. He gets nightmares."

"Fine," Nudge II said. "Just don't blame me when you get in trouble. Really I don't get why you think you're so much better than us, you're just as bad."

Amy looked like Ari felt when he got punched. Without another word to either of them she spun on her heel and stormed out of the bathroom, the door banging shut behind her.

She crossed the room to crouch next to Ari. "Take deep breaths, okay? Like she said. And don't drink water until next morning, it tastes gross and you'll just throw it up." She hesitated for a moment, chewing at her lip. "I'm Jane, by the way. Wendy said that your name is Ari?"

Ari nodded. "Is Amy…" He trailed off when Jane shrugged, and anger bubbled up in his chest. "You were a jerk to her, you know?" he told her.

She shrugged. "If she wants to go back to getting beaten up for messing up every tiny little thing, that's her business. I can be her friend, but not if she wants to get me in trouble." She touched the side of Ari's face. "Are you breathing okay?"

He nodded, and looked from her concerned eyes to the door, and back again.

It didn't take a second to decide. "I'm going after Amy," he announced. "I don't think she's gonna try to go into the vents again, so you can take your sneakers off."

And then he left, not looking back.

It turned out that Amy was sitting on an empty bunk, so he settled down next to her.

"I'm sleeping here," she told him. She didn't say anything else, just curled herself into a ball.

Ari shrugged and headed for the end of the bunk, curling up like she had done. "Okay," he said. The mattress was a lot comfier now that he was tired, now that his muscles were starting to ache. He fell asleep slowly, with each breath closing his eyes just a little more. Even the opening and closing of the bathroom door as Jane went back to her bunk didn't bother him.

The last thing he heard could have been his imagination.

"Thanks." It was barely a whisper.

* * *

 _1\. Fun fact time! In the original drafts of TNTS, I introduced all of the bird kids in one chapter. Hashtag horrible life choices. And even in this chapter, I started off introducing everybody at the table. Wendy, Peter, Jane, Fang II, Iggy II... all at once. Hashtag horrible life choices. Thank goodness my beta was like "okay you don't need to dump EVERYBODY at once." So now introductions are more spaced out. What do you think of the kids we've seen so far?_

 _2\. Once again, in the original drafts of TNTS, Amy's backstory as such didn't exist. It was changed here for reasons. What do you think of it?_

 _3\. More scientists! What nefarious, dastardly plots are they scheming about? How many more times will they say the word "fuck"? Will they ever adhere to proper bedtimes?_

 _4\. Late update was late, and chapters 10 and 11 might also suffer from the same issue. I'll try to keep y'all somewhat updated via tumblr text posts - the blog for this series is **mrnb-blog**. I'd suggest following it, even if only for the aesthetic._


	10. Change in Delivery

_Tokoloshe Monster beta read this... almost a year ago, wow._

* * *

Jeb Batchelder was a lot of things, but suicidal wasn't one of them. Neither, for that matter, was he self-sacrificing or stupid.

He lobbed Big Boy at the nearest Eraser and dove into the fireplace, dragging another Eraser behind him. The Eraser's huge body worked well as a shield, and Jeb was spared the worst of the bomb's shrapnel. He wasn't spared the shock wave, which pushed roughly two hundred and fifty pounds of freshly dead weight onto him at thirty miles an hour. It smashed his left shoulder into the brick wall, knocking him out for forty-six seconds.

When he came to he was covered in dust and crushed against the ground, his shoulder screaming bloody agony at him. He fixed his shoulder first—by the grace of God and his own good posture, it wasn't broken.

He managed to relocate it without much difficulty, gritting his teeth against the pain—pain so strong that his eyes rolled back into his head for one eternal moment. And then his shoulder snapped back in and he was gasping for air. It still hurt, but he ignored it in favor of clambering out from under the Eraser's body and flat-out sprinting for the E-house.

He had several things going for him. First, his legs were longer and he was leaner than the Erasers, who had been designed for brute force and quick fighting. Second, he knew these woods. They didn't.

But no matter how fast and no matter how smart he was, he was the rabbit and they were a pack of hungry wolves. They had the advantage in numbers, and it didn't take too long for the reinforcements to catch up.

When they did he was in the process of barreling through the woods at full speed. He almost ran into one, but skidded to a stop just in time. Before it could open its mouth to speak, Jeb punched it in the face. It stumbled back into a tree. Judging from the sharp snap and the dazed pain on its face, its nose had broken.

The four others jumped on him at once. He managed to elbow one in the nose, but another got its arm around his throat. He twisted, trying to get free, as his hands were cuffed behind his back.

"Right," said the Eraser that had cuffed him. " _Now_ you come with us."

They dragged him to the helicopter, where they handcuffed him to metal folding chair for the duration of the helicopter flight. Jeb snorted. Amateurs.

Anybody serious about escaping could have gotten out of this in a minute. The chair, flimsy and cheaply made, could have served as a weapon.

If his hands hadn't been cuffed with a mobility of about two inches in any given direction, Jeb would have cracked his knuckles. Everything was going just fine. This helicopter would bring him to California. Judging from the odd-looking extra fuel tank in the back, it would take him to California without any stops. By now—assuming a rest break no longer than six hours, Max, Fang, and Nudge would be over Nevada or Arizona.

Assuming he played his cards right, he'd be at the School in time to meet the Flock when they arrived, grab Ari, and get everybody on the road. With the School in their rearview mirror, they could proceed with Phase II of the plan that had been thirty years in the making. The only thing he would need to change would be his delivery.

A question rose in Jeb's mind: should he leave Ari behind? Keeping him in the School would get him out of the worst of the immediate danger, and prevent the targets from kidnapping him. Evidently he wasn't capable of a quick evasion. Perhaps it would be best if Ari were out of the picture when Phase II went underway. And once Phase II had commenced, the School wouldn't need to use his safety as leverage for compliance from both Jeb and the Flock, like they had before he left.

As the copter touched down, Jeb made his decision. For better or for worse, Ari would stay separate from the Flock. They would expend too much energy trying to protect him, as he obviously wouldn't be able to protect himself—or even keep up with the Flock as they were running away.

He gritted his teeth as the helicopter landed. The other Erasers filed out, but the broken-nosed one stayed, using a bolt-cutter to free Jeb from the chair.

As his hands were re-cuffed in front of him, he spotted a large black truck pulling up. A forty-something year old man wearing a Hawaiian-print shirt and khaki shorts jumped out and waved at him. Jeb didn' respond.

"Ah, come on, you tightwad bastard! I come out here and I don't get a _hello_ , or a _thank you_? Jesus. Some people don't know how good they've got it."

"A pleasure to see you again, Dr. Howard," Jeb said. The woodenness of his tone spoke his message clearer than the words themselves.

"Yeah, yeah, get in the truck. I get to take you to what they're calling _observation quarters_ now. Don't know why they didn't just land on the roof, save me the gas."

Jeb clambered up awkwardly into the truck cabin, most of the remaining Erasers filed into the back, and Howard, grinning, jumped up into the driver's seat. The drive back to the School was filled with Howard's attempts at starting conversation and Jeb's monosyllabic deflections. Eventually Howard shrugged and said _fine, be that way_ , and the remaining few moments were silent.

Until, of course, Dr. Howard decided to ignore one of the most _basic_ laws of driving and pull out his phone, talking to somebody named Reilly about double-addition to a genome. Jeb kept his eyes on the road, trying to understand the conversation andlook out for bumps and turns and small animals. He was mostly unsuccessful with the former. Even though he had buried himself in medical journals and magazines over the past six years, but it wasn't the same as being immersed in a field of study. And it definitely wasn't the same as trying to eavesdrop on half of a conversation held at rapid-fire speed while doing half the driving for the person who was talking. As the School grew closer and closer, Jeb found himself almost _missing_ it.

Once inside, the half-hearted nostalgia evaporated almost instantly. The squad of Erasers around him, weapons at the ready, didn't do anything to help it linger. The Erasers escorted him to the third floor, down a hallway of identical doors. Howard used a key in his pocket to unlock a door, and Jeb was shoved into the room. The door locked shut behind him with a _click_ , and Jeb heard Howard and the Erasers walking away.

When they were almost too far away for him to hear, Howard's cellphone went off. Jeb frowned. Probably Reilly again, and now he wouldn't be able to know what they were talking about. But there was no point in wasting time thinking about missed opportunities.

He ran a finger against the wall. It was painted white but that color had begun to fade over the years. Although it was by no means concrete, he wouldn't be able to break through it by himself. He would bet that an Eraser would be able to, though, especially if it had good reason to.

Turning on one heel, he examined the room. Although he knew that he wouldn't be able to escape from it, there would be no harm in trying.

The room wasn't by any means luxurious, but it was far from a prison cell. There was no window but there was a skylight, and through it he could see the now-dusky California sky. If he stood on his toes and leaned the right way, he could see outside.

He didn't try to clamber out through the skylight. Instead he returned his focus to the room.

The bed was bare of any sheets and blankets but the mattress looked comfortable enough. There were two doors on the left wall. When he opened them he saw that one led to a small but functional bathroom the other led to a smaller closet, stocked with lab coats, suit pants, button-up shirts, and shoes. Jeb, who had spent enough time searching for clothes from Goodwill, knew his size when he saw it.

Aside from those two doors the room was bare. No pens, no papers, no magazines.

All in all, there were worse places to spend a night.

Jeb, having spent a night in several of those "worse places," knew a good deal when he saw it. He fell asleep sitting upright on the bed.

When he woke up it was because he heard footsteps approaching his door. A cursory glance up to the skylight revealed that the sun had yet to rise. If he had to guess, he would put the time at around four in the morning. Unsurprising. He could recall many days where he had worked nights and slept days, his sleep cycle consisting of taking time whenever he could afford to. Not much had changed in six years, it seemed.

The door opened, and a man walked into the room. An observer feeling especially generous would have gauged his age at seventy-five or so. In reality he had yet to break sixty. His hair was entirely white, his face heavily lined, and his back stooped. When he walked, it was with a slow shuffle and with most of his weight resting on the well-polished cane held in his right hand.

Dr. Garcia hadn't borne the burden of the School very well over the past six years.

"Well," Garcia said, "it seems that the Flock is about to undergo a radical shift in their priorities. Tell me, how does the Flock intend to go about Phase II?"

Silence, complete and utter, reigned for a moment. And then:

"They don't know about Itex," Jeb said. This wasn't a conversation he had wanted to had—his superiors wouldn't _understand_. Each member of the Flock was unique, with Maximum being the ultimate expression of that—she was too headstrong, too independent, to allow herself to be groomed. He could raise her, he could point her in the right direction—but at the end of the day, he knew how she'd react to being _told_ to do something. Yesterday afternoon was still sharp in his memory. "I hadn't told them yet. I had wanted to wait until Maximum was grown."

"I am disappointed in you," Dr. Garcia said in heavily accented English. Once he had an aristocratic British accent, cultivated by years of emulating Cambridge peers. Now that was gone, replaced by a Mexican one. "I give you free reign, and you—you lie to me! I would have your name praised and you keep secrets from me! All of us, we were all here cheering you on—and this is how you thank us? This is _unacceptable_!" As he spoke he leaned forward on his cane, eyes narrowed.

Jeb didn't flinch, didn't blink. "I felt that your methods left much to be desired."

"Spare me your _bullshit_ ," Garcia snapped. "Our methods worked, are working, will continue to work."

"I had the Flock to care for—"

" _We_ had reports to write. _We_ had data to file on their development and behavior. _We_ did the best under the circumstances, and _you_ sabotaged us all! The fate of _your_ Flock is on _your_ head."

"Wait—"

"No. They _will_ be replaced." Garcia turned his back to Jeb, reached for his ear, and pulled off a small over-the-ear headphone. He pressed a button on the side and spoke into it. "Reilly. You will prepare the tanks for the backup—" He paused for a moment as Reilly spoke. "The Eraser tanks. The betas. Hormone levels will have to be adjusted, especially for the females. See that they're ready for to—You have to do _what_ in the afternoon?—Well, I'm glad to know that Simon found somebody for you to work with. No, there won't be a conflict of interests." He put the headphone back on.

"Your disastrous waste of money, time, and resources will be dealt with. It is now up to you how they will be dealt with."

"What do you mean?"

"Your cooperation with the Flock's replacement—your complete and utter cooperation. You won't attempt to escape, or help your son escape, or aid the Flock in any of _their_ escape attempts. You will assist with beta assimilation, in addition to your duties as a researcher in a research laboratory. You will consent, now and forever, to any and all tests done on the little 'family' you wanted to raise. If you don't agree to this, the Flock will die. If you agree to this but don't follow the letter and spirit of the laws I have laid out—the Flock will die." Dr. Garcia paused. "If, however, you do agree and comply fully—they will be allowed to live. You will have my word. They will be protected by my explicit order as the head of Itex Dead Mountains."

It didn't take a second. "I agree."

"You would," Dr. Garcia said, and walked out of the room, leaving Jeb alone with an aching shoulder and knuckles that had only just begun to scab over.

* * *

 _1\. A couple of people guessed correctly that Jeb wasn't dead at the end of "Are We Growing Up or Just Going Down." And of course he wasn't! I wouldn't kill off such an instrumental character seven chapters into the first installment of four. And since this is MRNB and people don't just come back from the dead willy-nilly, that means he survived. However..._

 _2\. Iggy, Gazzy, and Angel think that Jeb is dead. They'll develop as a result of this knowledge, and it will shape a fair amount of the next Iggy POV chapter. Does Jeb not being dead cheapen this? Personally, I'm of the opinion that it doesn't. I'll happily elaborate if you ask me to, so let me know what you think in a review._

 _3\. We're now at an interesting point in the story where you, the reader, know more about what's going on than the cast does. In some areas. I'm not sure how I feel about this as a writer - it makes producing surprising content slightly more difficult, and I worry that people are going to guess major plot points. And then I worry that how the plot is glaringly obvious and poorly set-up. And then I bang my head against the wall and chug water, because that makes me feel better. But at the same time, it's an interesting place to be. The tension isn't created from you not knowing what's going to happen - it's created from you wanting to know how characters are going to react to what you know when they find out. Is this appealing to you? Let me know in a review._

 _4\. Jeb's POV is... shrugs. This chapter was written a while ago, and, aside for some additions, has been untouched since then. I'm not quite sure how I feel about it. How do you guys think it is? What do you think of Jeb? Let me know in a cactus. Haha, just kidding, don't put your opinions in cacti and throw them at me. Put them in the review box! (Save the cactus throwing for later.)_

 _(seriously, guys, i love hearing from you. 53 reviews? i'm in awe and shock and so, so much appreciation. much thanks to all my friends who i was like 'hey theres a thing read it hoe' for putting up to me. even more thanks to the people who clicked on this because they think my writing is good - i hope that i'm living up to expectations. both sets of you guys inspire me to get better and do more.)_

 _And I'm sorry to end this on a negative note, but I'm still unaware of my beta's laptop situation. That means that the next chapter might be out late. The only reason that thisone wasn't is because I sort of played mix-it-up with chapter order due to Timeline Reasons._


	11. Canyons, Lakesides, Lonely Desert Roads

_Tokoloshe Monster and SydneyLouWho both looked over this chapter for me. And both of them are level of Leslie-Knope-esque compliments about their intelligence and writing ability. Additionally! nathan-p was the one who described to me what Colorado-type accents sound like. I'm very grateful, as I am godawful about sounds._

* * *

The sun was setting over the mountains, painting the sky in oranges and the purple-blue of clouds. I was on the edge of a canyon, my feet kicking out over empty air, Fang's hand resting under mine. I tilted my head back and opened my wings just enough to feel the warm air rustle against my feathers. Everything was so warm—my skin, after a long day in the sun, the scratchy grass beneath my legs, Fang's fingers entwined with mine.

"You're so beautiful like this," Fang said, and I looked over to him. He was in his usual raven-black attire, looking paler than normal. Why was that? I liked his olive-brown skin. Something—something was—

Fang shifted his head to meet my gaze. His eyes locked on mine, and my thoughts washed away. And it didn't bother me. The air flowing past my legs was like a river, and even though the canyon beneath us had no water, we could swim in it just fine.

"You, too," I said, even if it wasn't true. Fang and his sharp lines and sudden paleness weren't a part of this orange-river world; he was better suited for silky night skies and innumerable twinkling stars. Whereas Iggy was the clean gray light before sunrise, cold river water swirling and whirling. Speaking of—

"Where are the others?" They were supposed to be here, too. Nudge loved watching the skies, and she took pride in being able to describe them to Iggy. Gazzy would take running leaps into the night air even if he had a sprained ankle, and Ari and Angel had yet to get tired of me telling them about the summer night when we escaped from the School. Not only that, but the sky was now a deep red—Ari's favorite color. He'd tried to tell Iggy what it looked like once, with Nudge helping him.

When Fang didn't respond, my stomach twisted. It was too quiet, just the two of us sitting on the edge of the world. I tore my gaze away from his to stare down at the canyon, to look at the sandstone walls bleeding with red light.

"Fang," I said, and the word slipped out into the empty air around us. The weight of the sky was on my shoulders, in my lungs, and I felt so immeasurably small. "Fang, answer me."

"I'm so sorry, Max," Fang whispered, his voice hoarse. "But don't you know?" He raised an arm and pointed down at the canyon floor, hundreds of feet away.

The broken bodies of my family were piled in a heap, surrounded by a widening pool of their blood.

"Oh, God." I was far away—impossibly far away. But I could still see a worm pushing its way through Nudge's rotting eye, and I could hear flesh rip away as rats gnawed at Ari's arms and legs. My jaw tingled, and my mouth filled with saliva—I was a half-heartbeat away from barfing my guts out. To try to distract myself, I turned back to Fang. "How?"

"You—" His words were cut off abruptly, and something warm and wet splattered against my cheek. I raised my hand to my face and my fingertips came away crimson.

"Fang?"

He was falling, his body spiraling through empty air. Blood trailed behind him, and I could just make out a bullet wound on the back of his neck. He didn't open his wings, didn't even twitch them. Instead he hit the rocky ground with a messy splat.

Even from my spot up above, I could see how his skull had caved in, could tell that his neck had snapped. Part of me wanted to call out, and every bit of my body screamed at me to go down to him. But I couldn't. I was rooted in place, my hands clutching at the cloth of the surgical gown that I was wearing.

Night was coming. From the woods behind me I could hear Erasers, and I scrambled to my feet so I could face them. Moonlight glinted off of their bared teeth and shone off of the guns they held at the ready.

Unconsciously I took a step back, over empty air. Before I could make the choice to jump I was free-falling, my arms pinwheeling, the world blurring around me. I unfurled my wings and pushed down—

But I couldn't get airborne. There was a hand around my ankle, colder than the night air around me. I looked down and saw Fang.

Or rather, what was left of him. Half of his face was unrecognizable and pinkish-gray brain matter was smeared in his hair.

" _Stay with us_ ," he hissed.

I shrieked and flapped harder, barely gaining a foot of freedom. And then Angel grabbed my other ankle. "It's your fault," she gasped. A snake slithered out of her mouth and up my leg, and the feel of its slimy scales, slimy from time spent in Angel's guts, made my skin crawl.

They were dragging me down. I tipped my head back so I could see the cliff, and I reached out to the Erasers looking over the edge. Hope or desperation made me reach out to them.

"Please," I shouted. Nudge's hand covered my mouth, and the stench of rotting flesh made my eyes water. "Please just shoot me," I choked out.

The Erasers laughed—harsh, barking sounds—and turned away.

Panic bubbled up, and I redoubled my efforts to get free. I kicked out with bare feet, smashing Fang's skull again. My legs were sticky with blood, but I was gaining altitude. I could get away from this. Bones snapped as I finally kicked free from Angel, but Nudge was unshakeable and Fang's fingers might as well have been made of iron.

"Don't be sad," Ari said. I twisted my head to see him. His shirt and stomach had been ripped open, and his guts hung out, gray with rot. They slapped against his stomach and legs as he took a step forward. "We're all together now. Isn't that what you want, Max?"

Gazzy's hand took Angel's place around my calf. "Max," he whispered.

"Max," Fang wheezed.

Iggy's hand closed over Fang's, his nails drawing blood. "Max." His voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

"Max! Max, come on!"

I woke up covered in sweat, my blanket tangled around my legs. Nudge's hand was on my shoulder, her eyes filled with worry. "Max, it's like ten!"

"Gimme a minute," I wheezed, and rolled over, breathing hard. I kicked my blanket away and spread my arms wide, luxuriating in how _free_ I felt. Nightmares were the worst, and I'd be looking over my shoulder all day—but knowing that it was just a dream, that I was safe in the real world with a clear blue sky stretching endlessly above me—it didn't get much better than that.

And then I remembered where I was. In friggin' Arizona, with half a Flock, a kidnapped little brother, and _no food_.

Crudbuckets. I sat myself up and brushed off the reddish sand that had decided to get everywhere, shoved my blanket into my bag, and tried to ignore the aching of my empty stomach. I had eaten my last protein bar at about eight last night, when we had settled down here, on the far shore of Lake Mead. And water? Forget about it. We had tried drinking lakewater, but Nudge puked after half a liter, and none of us wanted to start up a fire to boil it. Fire was an easy way to get noticed, Jeb had told us. In the forest it didn't make much of a difference—we were at least thirty miles away from the nearest town. But here? When we landed, I had seen a glowing set of golden arches. We were a stone's throw away from civilization, which meant that there were police.

"How're you holding up?" I asked Nudge. She was a lot more put-together than I was, for sure. She wasn't covered in sand, her clothes weren't stuck to her with sweat, and she had even put barrettes in her hair. Given the prevalence of rainbows and sparkles, she had nicked a couple of Angel's.

She shrugged her skinny shoulders. "I'm hungry. Like, I woke up when the sun rose because I was hungry but you were still sleeping and Fang is… still still sleeping, I guess, and I didn't want to wake you up since you both took watches and I didn't, so I washed my clothes in the lake because they were all sweaty—speaking of, do you want to borrow my deodorant? You kinda need it. And I managed to bring that peach body soap/shampoo combo that you like, in case you want to wash your hair in the lake."

"Fang's still sleeping?" I could deal with minor issues, like personal hygiene and starvation, later. Fang had taken some serious hits last afternoon, and I wanted to make sure that he was okay.

Nudge pointed at a spot over my shoulder, and I did my best not to flinch. Sure enough, there was a Fang-shaped lump of blanket still on the ground. I headed over, crouching about three feet away from him. My stomach churned. I knew, logically, that my dream was just that—a dream. But the sight of Fang's bashed-in skull flashed before my eyes, and _logic_ didn't matter so much.

I gritted my teeth. Fear was a message. I had to ignore it.

I prodded Fang. "C'mon, wake up."

He flinched at my touch and rolled around to face me, flopping like a fish out of water. His eyes were bleary, and his face was still pale from blood loss. He had been shaky in the air yesterday as the day went on, and I was glad that Nudge had asked to stop when she did. Fang was too stubborn to let me know he was hurt.

Nudge bounded over. "Hey Fang! Can you please, like, get your butt in gear? I'm starving. And Ari's got to be starving too; remember how they would only feed us like twice a day? And it was super puny for us, because, like, metabolism stuff, but it's not gonna be that good for him either. Like I don't think that two peanut butter sandwiches a day is good for _anybody_. But oh my god I would do anything for a peanut butter sandwich I haven't had anything for _hours_."

Fang shrugged and started to wriggle out of the cocoon he had made of his blanket.

"Are you hungry?" I asked as he packed the blanket into his knapsack. It was a stupid question. I could tell by the dark circles under his eyes and the way that his hands shook that he needed some nutrition, stat.

He just shrugged. Again.

I groaned. "Not an answer, Fang."

He pulled a face as he pulled on his windbreaker. "I could eat." He shouldered his pack and stood. I didn't miss the way he had to shift to steady himself—like his world had turned into gray dots.

"Alright," I said, and stood. "That settles it. We're getting food."

"How?" Nudge asked. "Are we gonna dumpster dive? Because it's blistering hot and I think the food will have started rotting, and also we're going to get garbage juice all over our clothes and hair and what if we get _caught_ , like, I don't want to go to jail for dumpster diving especially because I've never _been_ dumpster diving and I don't think any of us have unless you've been sneaking off to do it without Jeb knowing. So we'd do it, like, the wrong way, and get arrested, and I don't want to get arrested because then they'd send me to Area 51 like you said the other day and I don't want to—"

"We have saved money," I said. "How do you guys feel about a McBreakfast?" One of the many perks of being a bird kid is that we can eat hideously wonderful junk food and not gain a pound.

Nudge gawped. "Really?" Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Fully loaded ones, like at Thanksgiving, with a whole turkey drumstick and two heaping cups of mashed potatoes—

I shook myself out of it, rubbing at my mouth to remove any possible drool. "Really."

"Sounds good," Fang said.

We headed into town, trying to look as unsuspicious as possible. Which is kind of hard to do when you're an unwashed teenager wearing a heavy jacket in the middle of summer. Thankfully, the town was just about empty. There was an old lady walking a dog who looked even older than her, but she was more or less the only person on the street.

It was like I was on the edge of the world again, and any second Fang would drop off. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket, rubbing my fingers against the leather to ensure that it wouldn't turn into the scratchy fabric of a surgical gown.

Compared to the stifling heat of the sidewalk, the air-conditioned McDonald's was heaven. While Nudge and Fang ordered I took a quiet moment to stand still with my eyes closed, basking in the cool air. But it ended, like most moments did, and I stepped up to the register behind Fang.

"Hi," I said. "Can I get the big breakfast with hotcakes, um, and a yogurt parfait, and cinnamon melts?"

The girl behind the register nodded as she punched in my order.

I had to rummage through my backpack to find my money bag, and counting out individual coins was a pain, but I had more than enough to pay for the three of us.

"Y'all have a nice day," said the girl behind the cash register. Her voice was soft and she had a strong Southern accent, which was kind of weird—I had grown up listening to Jeb's Cali drawl. And when we did go into town, we'd be surrounded by Colorado accents, which I guess we picked up—broader, slower when it came to pronouncing words. Hearing this was like hearing a whole new language.

Nudge beamed at her. "Thanks!"

The torturously long wait for our food was, without any exaggeration, one of the longest stretches of time in my entire life. To be that close to food cooking, to be able to _smell_ it, and to not be able to eat it—it was enough to make my stomach growl like a rabid dog. But finally all three of us had trays and were able to settle down at a table near the window.

"Max," Nudge said after inhaling half a sausage roll, "how're we gonna get Ari? What's the plan?" She took a swig of orange juice. "I was thinking that we, we could—"

"We could eat our breakfasts in peace and quiet," Fang suggested, stirring creamer into his coffee. He reached across the table to steal a forkful of my eggs.

I batted his hand away. "Nudge, look," I said. "I'm worried about Ari, too. But right now we need to focus on where we are. We need to get to him before we can do anything."

She sighed and shoved the rest of her sausage roll into her mouth, savaging it the way lions tore into living gazelles. She swallowed and grinned. "Max, what did the vegetable say when it was being strangled?"

Fang buried his face in his hands, letting his fork and knife fall onto his mostly-emptied plate.

I shrugged. "I don't know, what?"

Her grin got wider. "Help, you're _arti-choking_ me!"

The pun was godawful, but looking at her bright smile and seeing Fang roll his eyes, both of them shining in the late-morning sunlight—it was beautiful, in a surreal kind of way. We were hundreds of miles away from home, hundreds of miles away from where we needed to be. But we were also _here_ , and now, and none of us were starving or on the verge of passing out.

Laughter bubbled up and spilled out, and I had to cover my mouth so I didn't spray half-chewed food all over the place.

That was when I saw the guy. It was out of the corner of my eye, and only for a flicker of a second, but I could have sworn that I saw a man in a suit, standing at the other side of the road. He was tall with broad shoulders and plenty of muscle, and he was fiddling with something in his hands.

A chill ran down my spine, and my legs tensed beneath the table. Without looking, I could feel Fang do the same, getting ready to break the window and jump out if necessary.

I shot a glance at Nudge. She had dropped her parfait, and picked her backpack up from the floor. Judging from the bulges in the fabric of her cover jacket near the tops of her shoulders, she had begun to unfurl her wings.

"Max, what is it? Did you see something?" She was like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming van.

I tore my eyes away from her face to stare out the window again. The man in the suit was gone. Like he had never been there at all. Had I just imagined him? Dreamed him up because I couldn't have a good moment with my family?

"Max?" Nudge asked, her voice high.

"No," I said. I swallowed, tried to sound more convincing. "No, I didn't see anything. We're fine."

Fang and Nudge both relaxed, picking up their food and continuing like nothing had happened. Nudge even tried to start up a conversation, and her voice sounded like the wind screaming through the mountains. I couldn't focus. Not on her, not on my food, not on the man who wasn't there anymore.

I snagged Fang's coffee cup and drained it before he could stop me, relishing the rush of caffeine and sugar.

"Let's hit the road," I said.

We dumped our trash and headed out the door, Nudge waving at the cashier as she went. I headed off, back to the lake, but Fang put his hand on my shoulder.

"I saw a couple of cars headed out there," he said. "Tourists."

I nodded and set off in the opposite direction. This town was puny, so it wouldn't be that hard to get out into the desert. We'd take off there, and nobody'd be the wiser. And then in a few hours, we'd be on the School's doorstep, ready to bust Ari out and head back home.

We didn't leave the town so much as it did us—slowly there were fewer houses lining the streets, and finally we were walking down an empty road. Well—almost empty. Up ahead of us there was a group of kids about our age. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. They were headed home—headed back from a job, headed off to do homework, coming back from the movies. They'd never know what flying felt like, never feel the rush of being thousands of feet above the ground. Maybe they'd never even been outside of this tiny town.

But at the same time they'd never suffer from hunger cramps severe enough to make them puke. They wouldn't wake up covered in sweat from the nightmares about what they went through. And they'd never have to leave half their family behind on a near-suicidal mission to rescue their kidnapped little brothers.

It sounded nice when I thought of it like that. But it also sounded really, really boring. I was ready to shrug off these kids, this inconsequential group of humans, when I noticed something.

 _Most_ of them were my age or older. And guys. Big, beefy guys with sunburnt skin. One even had a shotgun resting in the crook of his arm, and one looked like he juggled tractors for a living. But the one in the middle?

She was a girl. Petite, barely five feet tall, maybe Nudge's age. She had her shoulders squared, and she took each step slowly.

Now I know that the world is full of strange, unexplainable happenstances. I have freaking wings, for God's sake. And the man from earlier was decidedly unexplainable. But this right here? Was not a coincidence.

I adjusted my backpack on my shoulders and sped up.

Fang kept pace with me. "Max, no."

I glared at him. "Max, _yes_."

He sighed, and that was when Nudge jostled my elbow. "Max?" she said. "Do you see those guys? That looks kinda like a bad situation, you know, like, _stranger danger_ , and— _oh my God they have a gun_."

I set my jaw. "I'm going to help her."

Fang sighed. "You can't save everybody."

He had said that nine months ago, when we had found a den of rabbits abandoned by their mother. And I had ignored him then, gathering them all up into my backpack and taking them home. And he had complained the whole way back, but he had helped feed them, and I think he had teared up when we let them go free.

So what if I couldn't save everybody? I could still do the right thing.

"I'm going to help her," I told him. "You can—"

"I'm going with you," Nudge said. She stuck her jaw out.

I sighed, not wanting to argue with her. "Fine. Fang, you can go back to Lake Mead if you want. We'll meet up with you."

Fang stared at me for a long moment, and then shook his head.

Excellent.

I broke into a jog, closing in on the kids ahead of us. We caught up with them in less than a minute. I tapped Shotgun on the shoulder. He whirled around, jaw dropping, and I smirked.

"Five on one," I said. "That sounds fair."

The girl in the middle stared at me. "You should stay out of this," she said, her voice shaking. Up close like this I could see how the blood had drained from her face—she wasn't _pale_ by any standard, but she still looked sick with fear.

"Yeah," said the guy on her left. I snorted. He was dressed in forest camouflage—in the _desert_. "Listen to the chick."

The girl glared at him, but flinched when he shifted to grin at her. One of the guys behind her—the one with ratty-looking white boy dreads—put a hand on her shoulder and started pulling, and something inside of me just _snapped_.

In retrospect, it was probably my willingness to put up with this nonsense.

I smashed my elbow into Shotgun's nose. It broke like a dropped egg and he stumbled back, groaning. That gave me the space I needed to get face-to-face with Dreadlocks. He had a firm grip on the girl's shoulder, but she was wriggling like a caught fish, distracting him.

Good.

I slammed my knee into his groin. He doubled over, letting go of the girl to cradle his crotch, and I lifted my foot to kick him back by the shoulder.

That was before his shirtless friend grabbed me by the hair, yanking me back to land hard on my ass. He kicked me in the stomach, making me throw up in my mouth a little. Gross.

I rolled out of the way, bumping into Nudge—she was grappling with Camouflage, who had a good four inches on her. She tripped over me, falling backwards, and I flung up a hand to catch her. Nearly dislocated my shoulder, too.

I scrambled up to my feet and looked for Shirtless. Fang had him in a chokehold, which meant that there was only one guy left—Linebacker. He had a hand fisted in the girl's long, dark hair, trying to yank her away.

Yeah, no.

I ran up behind him and leapt onto his back, choking him with my forearm across his throat. I yanked back hard, arching my back for leverage. He flailed and tipped backward, sending us both crashing into the ground. The impact smashed my wings and jarred my spine. I tipped my head backward and bit my lip against a shout of pain.

For a long moment Linebacker tried to get free, but I was a lot stronger than him. He went limp, leaving me with a bruised tailbone and a lap full of two-hundred-plus pounds of deadweight.

I wriggled out from under him and stood. Breathing hurt, and the fall had left me wobbly.

"Hey," I wheezed, and waved at the girl. "You okay?"

She nodded, wide-eyed.

I shot a glance over my shoulder, and saw Fang and Nudge headed up to us. They both looked fine. Nudge had a black eye, and Fang was rubbing at his jaw—but black eyes weren't serious, and Fang didn't look like he had broken anything. I let out a sigh of relief.

"Who are you?" the girl demanded. "I haven't seen you before. What're you doing here?"

"We're tourists," Nudge said brightly, brushing her hands off on her jeans. "From Maine. Hence the, um, the jackets. We thought this place would be like Maine. Who're _you_?"

"Ella," the girl said. "Ella Martinez. And oh my God, your eye! Are you okay?"

Nudge nodded.

She turned to me. "And that guy, like, he _crushed_ you! How are you still standing?"

I shrugged, straightening up. I had gotten my breath back, and my legs were solid under me again. "I work out."

She didn't seem to have a problem with that answer, for which I was grateful—I didn't exactly need her poking and prying and figuring out that the three of us were mutant freaks on the lam.

"Alright, Ella," I told her. "Let's get you home."

She nodded. "I live… down the road."

We headed off, walking fast—

And then there was a shotgun blast, and something whizzed over my head—barely by a foot.

I threw a glance over my shoulder. Shotgun was up on one knee, gun in hand, blood streaming from his nose. He pumped the barrel to eject the spent cartridge, and took aim again—

I didn't think about it. Not consciously, anyway—I threw myself at Fang, knocking him to the ground.

And my shoulder erupted in a burst of pain so intense that I blacked out for a half-second.

"Max," Fang hissed, his eyes wide. I followed his gaze, cutting my eyes down and to my right—and _crap_. My jacket was ripped, and blood was seeping through the leather. Some of it dripped down, landing on Fang's cheek.

"Max!" Nudge shouted, tugging at my backpack. I shrieked—it felt she was ripping my body away from my arm. The pain made me nauseas, but I forced myself to stand steady. Fang scrambled to his feet as well, and the four of us started running.

I won't lie—I was barely conscious by the time we got to Ella's house. I've been beaten bloody, thrown across rooms, forced to run at top speed on an empty stomach. This was different. Worse, kind of—after a while my arm started feeling numb, and I couldn't tell how much blood I had lost. By the time we got to Ella's bungalow, the pain itself had died down, but the world around me had taken on the consistency of maple syrup. Ella sprinted up the stairs, banging on the door.

"Mom! Mom! There's a girl outside, and she's hurt! She got shot! Mom!" Her voice sounded tinny, even though she was barely five feet away.

Fang, Nudge, and I shot each other horrified glances, and terror pooled in the pit of my stomach.

Ella spun back to face us. "Don't worry," she said. "My mom's a vet. She can help." She banged on the door again. "Mom!"

The door swung open, and a middle-aged Hispanic woman poked her head out. "Ella, what—"

I shifted my wings underneath my jacket, getting ready to ditch it and start flapping, and bit my lip when pain flared up. Son of a—he had hit my wing, too!

Ella's mom had opened the door fully, and was gesturing us in. I went, Fang and Nudge trailing me. What else could I do? I couldn't get away. My first aid knowledge was mediocre, and theirs wasn't much better. Like it or not, this lady was our only chance. The door shut behind us, and I took a deep breath.

* * *

 _I liked the Max/Fang/Nudge dynamic. They play off of each other well. That's one of the strengths of MR, I think - the personalities and bonds of the Flock are such that you can put any number of characters in the same scene and they'll all develop their own unique set of interactions. And if you put a slightly **different** group together, they'll take that set of interactions and change it completely._

 _My favorite thing about this chapter was how many moods it cycled through. Fun fact! When I was writing this chapter in Word, I got one page of hipster wet dream prose, and then page two rolls around like **hello little children its time for nightmares**. And okay, like. Mini-rant ahead._

 _Max's canon nightmare always Bugged Me, on a level that I couldn't quite express. Now that I've written a corresponding scene, I kind of can. The issue with Max's nightmare is that it's not scary. It ends on a high note, and while it's not BAD, it also isn't GOOD. Not to mention that you have the godawful line in STWAOES that the Voice delivers about Max's nightmare Becoming Real and everything being a circle and hand to god I swear I'll never do that to you guys. Ever._

 _So yeah? What did you think about this chapter? About the Fax? Because that's still going to be a thing, you know. At the moment it's slow-building, but it's still going to be, like, a thing._


	12. Troubled Thoughts

_Much gratitude to Tokoloshe Monster, my beta. Also thanks so much to joan of radius, justadoodle, and pinfeather, who reviewed the last chapter!_

* * *

"Okay… this looks bad."

Hawkeye, Matt Fraction

* * *

The afternoon sun beat down on Iggy, warming his wings but scorching the back of his neck. But the pain of sunburn was subsumed under other, more important, pains. His empty stomach growled and twisted, his throat felt as dry as Death Valley, and his head ached from a night without sleep. Worse than any of those, however, was the knowledge that his younger siblings were going through the same, maybe worse, and that he couldn't do anything about it.

He raised his voice, shouting over the roaring of the wind. "Check-in!"

"I'm fine!" Judging from the way Gazzy's voice sounded, he had taken the lead. Again. Iggy frowned. Gazzy was faster than Angel—he was older, had been training for longer, and had a broader wingspan. But just because he _could_ outpace her didn't mean that he _should_. Not only that, but there was no way that it was sustainable. They'd been in the air since they had flown away from the cabin. At around midnight they had stopped in the forest to snarf whatever food they had in their packs. Iggy had managed to convince Gazzy and Angel to get two hours of sleep while he kept watch, but at this point they were running on empty.

Angel's voice in his mind confirmed that. _I'm starving and tired and everything hurts_.

Iggy tried not to flinch. It wasn't that her telepathic voice _hurt_ —the static-filled burst of last night was an anomaly. It was just weird, hearing her voice as crystal-clear as if he were standing next to her.

 _Sorry_ , she said.

 _It's fine_ , Iggy thought at her. _Just takes some getting used to. You said you were hungry?_

 _Yeah. Can we land? There are cabins—empty ones._

For a second Iggy was torn. Landing meant losing time. It had been a whole day since the other three had left—chances were they were already at the School's doorstep. Every second that the three of them spent on the ground was a second further away from being reunited. And, God, Iggy's stomach was in _knots_ over what was happening to Ari. The scientists at the School didn't mind testing a risky and obviously flawed procedure on one of their—according to Jeb—most successful projects. Who knew what they'd do to a kid when they didn't have anything to lose?

At the same time, there was no way that Iggy could turn Angel down. Not when she had been sprinting for hours on end. The fact that she wasn't dead in the air was a miracle in and of itself.

 _In the forest_ , he told her. _You need to find a good spot_. "Gazzy!" he called. "We're landing!"

Gazzy groaned but followed them all the same, and Iggy kept an ear out for him as he followed Angel's circling path downward. Tracing slipstreams was hard; doing it while landing was doubly so. Back at home he'd usually just close his wings and drop most of the distance, only unfurling them when he knew he was close to the ground. It was a quick and easy way to get out of the air.

But now he couldn't do that. He didn't know exactly how high up he was, and he _definitely_ didn't know what the ground was like. If he dropped too far he'd break his wings on the trees. Or he'd just splatter all over the ground.

Angel must have picked up on his worry, because she went down slower than she usually would have.

He landed on shaky legs. His wings ached after hours of flying, and folding them up cramped muscles that he didn't know he had. He let out a shaky breath and shouldered the bomb bag that he had been carrying. To his left and a bit behind him, Gazzy staggered and fell.

"I'm okay," he groaned, pulling himself up.

Iggy turned. "You sure?"

"Positive," Gazzy insisted. "I'm fine. I could run a marathon."

"You're lying," Angel told him. "Iggy, he thinks this is worse than that time he stayed up for three days straight." Unlike her mental voice, she slurred her words and spoke so quietly Iggy had to strain to hear her.

"Tattletale!" The insult would have had more weight if Gazzy didn't sound utterly terrified.

"Butthead!" And now Angel was on the verge of tears on top of everything else.

Iggy stepped between them, holding out his hands. His lower body ached with every step. "Guys. Stop fighting." He took a breath in, ignoring the hunger pains that had decided to migrate to his _head_ , of all places. "I know that this sucks. But let's just find the cabin, and," he yawned, blinking away sleep, "and find the cabin, and get some food."

Angel headed off, and Iggy followed her. Gazzy stayed at his side and put Iggy's hand on his shoulder, guiding him away from roots and pushing away low-hanging branches.

"Thanks," Iggy told him once they were out of the woods.

"No problem," Gazzy said. "'Kay, there's like three cabins—one on your three-o'clock, one on your twelve, and one on your eleven."

"They're all empty," Angel added. "But the three-o'clock is the biggest."

Iggy nodded. "Okay. Three-o'clock it is."

Breaking in wasn't that hard—the window was removed from its frame after some finagling with a screwdriver from his tool kit. Iggy slipped the bomb bag off of his shoulder and went in first, holding the screwdriver like a knife. A moment of silence helped him relax, if only marginally, and he motioned for the other two to come in. They scrambled over each other, falling to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Gazzy flopped over and groaned before standing. "Let's go get some food."

It didn't take long for them to find the pantry, but Iggy insisted on restocking their packs before they dug into the food. He reached out, taking whatever cans his fingers touched. Angel and Gazzy did the same.

Finally their bags were full, and Iggy could let himself think about what they were going to eat _now_.

"Holy cow," Angel said, and picked something off of the floor. She shook it, and it sloshed—a drink of some kind? "I've never seen this much Mountain Dew in one place."

"There's like—" Gazzy hesitated, counting. "Nine, ten bottles? Two liters a bottle? That's thirty liters."

Iggy grinned. Finally, some good news. "Guys, say hello to your new friend—liquid energy. What do they have left in the way of food?"

"Ritz crackers, Doritos, Twinkies, and an industrial-size jar of chocolate peanut butter," Angel said. When she spoke again, she sounded grossed-out—a pleasant change from exhaustion and fear. "Who _eats_ this junk?"

Iggy shrugged. "College students? I dunno. Doritos sound good, though." They didn't usually have junk food—it was expensive, and since they all burned through food fast as forest fires, buying cheap bulk stuff took priority over whatever new combination of flavors companies shoved into crinkly bags. And right now, Iggy'd eat raw potatoes if it meant stopping the awful empty _aching_ that took up most of the space in his torso.

Gazzy cleared his throat. "Can we eat outside? I don't…" He trailed off, but Iggy knew what he meant. This cabin wasn't safe—well, nowhere was safe. But at least once they got out, they'd be able to make a quick up-and-away.

Iggy nodded, and began retracing his steps. He looked ridiculous like this, but it was easier than fumbling his way around a completely unfamiliar cabin. The other two followed him. They sat against the front wall of the cabin, food spread out equally between them, stuffing their faces and swigging caffeinated soda. Their bags sat over by the door, and their jackets were folded up into cushions. The sun was shining brightly down, its warm rays only making Iggy feel more and more tired. He gulped soda and bit down on the inside of his cheek. They didn't have time to sleep. _Ari_ didn't have time for them to sleep.

"It's okay, Gazzy," Angel said abruptly, chewing on her fifth Ritz-cracker-and-PB sandwich. "I'm scared too. Cracker?"

Gazzy reached across Iggy to snatch the roll from her with a crinkling of plastic. "I'm not _scared_ ," he insisted. "I'm _angry_. If I see an Eraser, I'm gonna throw a bomb in its face. I'm gonna kick it in the 'nads. They kidnapped Ari! And they—they—" His breath hitched and half-formed sobs tore their way out of his throat.

Iggy's throat tightened. Jeb was the reason that they weren't feral in the School, or half-feral in the woods. He'd taught Iggy how to fish down at the river, had taken them all on yearly field trips to Denver, had taught them how to fight and how to cook and stitch up wounds. He had been the one that had taught Iggy and Max and Fang that they were people, not dogs to be locked up in cages. Every night for a year he had checked in on them to make sure they weren't locking themselves in their closets because of a misguided instinct. And none of them had been able to help him when it mattered the most.

Tears were rising to Iggy's eyes, but he didn't wipe them away. Instead he put a hand on Gazzy's back, pressing the heel of his palm against the base of his younger brother's wings. Gazzy snuffled.

"I'm _fine_." His voice was hoarse with tears and exhaustion.

"I'm sorry," Angel whispered. "I should have heard them sooner, I should have—" She buried her face into Iggy's side, wrapping her arms around him. Hot tears soaked through his shirt, and he smoothed her hair with his free hand.

"It's not your fault," he said. She shook her head, squeezing him tighter. "It's _not_ ," he insisted.

"It's the _School's_ fault." Gazzy's voice was black with rage. "When we bust Ari outta there, I'm gonna blow the whole place up."

"I know," Iggy said. "But we have to get there first, okay?" He took a ragged breath. Tears were streaking down his face and he was powerless to stop them, but he had to be here. He had to say this. Gazzy had to know this. "It's… satisfying. To think about how you're going to hurt the people who do the wrong thing. But it burns you out. The thing that keeps people alive is picking yourself up and walking forward."

How many days had he wasted fuming in his dog crate, dreaming about getting back at the whitecoats who blinded him but remaining a passive lab rat? More than he could count. More than he could remember. He owed Max his life—she stopped him from burning out. She was the one who showed him that he could fight back against the Erasers, that he could kick and holler and thrash around.

Angel froze, her arms locking like iron bars around Iggy's ribcage. "Erasers," she whispered.

It was like being doused with a bucket of ice water. Iggy froze, his heart beating jackrabbit-fast, his ears attuned to every leaf rustling, every twig snapping.

They were on his two-o'clock, their boots thudding against the ground as they ran up a hill. Iggy's breath caught in his lungs—how many were there? He could hear at least seven—way more than the three of them could take on, even if they were at their peak.

He jackknifed to his feet, tripping over himself in his haste. He grabbed backpacks at random, shoving them towards Gazzy and Angel. Angel grabbed hers and leapt into the air, her wings beating heavily, but Gazzy stayed on the ground.

"Go!" Iggy snapped.

"I'm going to fight them!" Gazzy protested.

"No, you're not," Iggy snarled, "You're going to fucking _abscond_." He grabbed Gazzy by the collar and threw him forward, into the air.

Iggy grabbed his pack and his jacket, and started to unfurl his wings, but cold realization hit him before he could take a step forward. The bomb bag was on the other side of the cabin. He'd left it behind when they climbed out, holding their food.

 _Shit_.

If the Erasers got that bag, then the three of them would have _nothing_. He spent hours building those bombs, hours trying to keep his family safe—he couldn't lose it. He straightened up, pressing his back against the wall. He could edge around the house, and grab the bag when he got to it. He just hoped to God that the Erasers didn't—

"Looking for something, birdy?" The footsteps had stopped, and the sound of heavy, meaty breaths was closer than ever. The Erasers were a stone's throw away, and Iggy's hand itched for a grenade, a bomb—even a matchbox one. _Anything_ to get him out of here, to get back at the sons of bitches hurting his family.

 _Iggy!_ Angel screamed in his mind, and he automatically twisted his head toward the source of the sound, all other concerns forgotten. _Iggy, look—_

An Eraser slammed into him, shoving him against the wall. All the breath left Iggy's body in a brutal wheeze, and all he could do was gasp for air that he couldn't feel. The Eraser stood up, chuckling, with Iggy slung over its shoulder. It turned and headed back to its friends. Iggy kicked out at it frantically. His world had narrowed to the arm wrapped around him, to the Eraser that he couldn't escape.

Clarity hit like a bolt of lightning. Iggy snapped out his wings and arched up, flapping frantically.

His spine felt like it was breaking, like he was being ripped in half. His wings were burning, every muscle screaming in agony. The Eraser was clutching at him frantically now.

"Gazzy, _no_!" Angel shrieked, and there was the sound of a body hitting the dirt, back where the cabin was.

Iggy kicked out harder, thrashing. The sound of his wings beating was louder than his hammering heartbeat, louder than the Eraser yelling at him. And then there was a blast louder than all of that and he was on the ground again, knocked out of the air.

For a horrible second he was alone in the world. Caught between heartbeats, between breaths, with nothing to help him find his way. His ears rung with a lack of sound that drowned out everything else.

And then another explosion sounded. He rolled away on autopilot, hands clapping over his ears. Slowly the stench of blood and viscera reached him, intermingling with the sulfur-like smell of an explosion. He nearly gagged, but pushed himself to his knees. He had to find the others. He had to get into the air. When he heard his younger brother shouting, he almost sobbed with relief.

"Stay the hell away from us!" Gazzy was on his eleven-o'clock, furious and terrified.

Iggy pushed himself up to his knees and stood, keeping his hands over his ears. "In the air," he shouted, "Now!" And then he leapt.

Every stroke pulled at his pectorals. Keeping himself upright made his abdominals ache. He wobbled, falling too far down and overcompensating, and his head ached.

"Gazzy! Where are you?"

"Over here!" Gazzy called. Sure enough, Iggy could hear his wings beating.

"Throw me the bomb bag!"

Gazzy tossed it with a rustling of cloth, and Iggy swooped forward to catch it.

"The Erasers?" he asked, once he had the bag in hand.

"Dead." Angel's voice was hollow with shock.

" _Good_." Iggy and Gazzy spoke in unison, and relief bubbled up in Iggy's chest. They were safe, if only for a little while. They could keep going. And all of them were full of adrenaline—they could catch up to the others like this.

"Okay," Iggy said. "We go west. Angel, you set the pace."

They headed off.

* * *

 _Now that I've posted the last of the rewritten chapters, I'm thinking about increasing updates. So it would be Saturdays and Wednesdays._

 _Chapter title is from "What a Catch, Donnie," by Fall Out Boy. I don't own Fall Out Boy._

 _More importantly, Iggy POV. I've recently started trying to read comics. My attention span is godawful and it's a pain in the butt to try to focus on them when they're on a computer screen, so I'm not very good at it. But there are two series that have really caught my interest, for different reasons. The one that's relevant here is the twenty-three comic-long "Hawkeye" series, written by Matt Fraction with art by David Aja. It uses distinctive dialogue, a "scratchy" kind of art (as opposed to the painting-style "Black Widow" comics), and plenty of wordless panels to convey a picture of a man, with all of his ups and downs. And that man is a wreck. Every comic starts with "Okay—this looks bad." And it does. Clint gets thrown off of rooftops. He gets beaten. He gets shot at. He gets tied up. At one point his house gets raided when he's naked, for God's sake. And every single one of these things hurts him, in one way or another. Clint is frequently covered in bandages, he's sent to the hospital at least twice, and the art style does a phenomenal job of portraying a man who is tired. Action has a physical cost, and it's conveyed well in the comic. He keeps going, because he's tough. He's a very strong man, and it's admirable. But he's also a human, and his pain makes him real and relatable. It even makes him heroic, because he picks himself up time and time again, no matter how badly he's beaten._

 _I tried to capture some of that tiredness in this chapter. Iggy is strong—he survived being blinded and abused from a young age, and he managed to recover and become a productive person, contributing both levity and sustenance to a large household. Gazzy is strong—he's only eight, but he knows when his older brother needs an arm to lean on, and as the oldest of the "little kids" he's more or less elected himself as their leader. Angel is strong—she lives in the heads of incredibly damaged people, while the one person who should have had all the answers had a mind that was closed off from her. All three of these kids are strong! They're tough and they've got spunk or guts or temerity or whatever you choose to call it—but they're still human. Enhanced past what we would call "human," yes, but that doesn't mean that they don't suffer._

 _This is them being tired. This is them not being able to stay in the air. This is them hurting, and this is them screwing up. This is them crying—ugly crying, wrecking their shirts with snot. This is hunger pains, muscle cramps, and sleep loss and everything that comes with extreme exertion. And this is what makes them human. Bird kids aren't superheroes. They can be heroic, but they aren't invincible. Personally, I think that this makes their story more compelling. What do you think?_


	13. Shades of Brownish-Red

_[immortan joe voice] Once again I salute my beta reader Tokoloshe Monster, and all the reviewers: Maxandfang4ever, petrochem, and an anonymous gay baby nerd._

* * *

Every muscle in my body was tense, aching for me to burst out the door and sprint off into the distance. There was no way I could get any kind of medical help without Ella's mom seeing—well, seeing my wings. And when that happened, there were two possible reactions: she would either take it in stride and not be at all put out that a fourteen-year-old girl was apparently a winged mutant, or she would panic, call seventeen different news stations, the police, and Whitecoats R Us.

Guess which one would happen. Go on, guess.

Seeing as the three of us had just entered a house we knew nothing about, I made an executive decision. And by "executive decision," I mean "the best choice in a bad situation." I'm the Flock leader for a reason, guys. I can handle myself in a crisis.

"Fang, Nudge," I said, "I want you two to get out of here."

Ella and Dr. Martinez stared at me, but I ignored them in favor of glaring at Fang and Nudge, who were also staring at me. Jeez, it was like they didn't trust me.

"B-bu—" Nudge started.

I cut her off with a wave of my hand. Unfortunately, I had chosen to wave the hand attached to the shoulder with a freaking bullet wound. Pain flared up, and for a moment all I was seeing was red.

I grimaced and continued anyway. "Nudge, look. Worst-case scenario means that you two get back to Eleanora, meet up with the others, and find Shorty. But in the meantime, go to the place that made you puke. I'll meet you there. Keep your chin up, okay."

Managing to talk in code not fifteen minutes after being shot? Sometimes I'm pretty clever. Fang must have thought so too, because he nodded once. In Fang-isms, that meant _I'm going to do exactly what you say because you have a good head on your shoulders, one of which has blood gushing out of it._

He also gave me a long look, his dark eyes holding something that I couldn't quite decipher. I held my breath, waiting for him to say something. Hopefully it wouldn't be something _stupid_ , because one of my arms was out of commission and I'd probably have to punch him. _Come on_ , I thought, staring right back at him. _I can handle myself._

"We'll mead you later," he finally said, which meant _your use of code is great so I'm going to copy it, even though I am clearly not as good as you_.

I smiled at him, knowing that he didn't need me to actually say the words _thank you_. And he didn't—he did the thing that he did where his mouth didn't actually move, but his eyes crinkled up a little like he was smiling.

This excellent planning session came to its logical conclusion—the adult in the room stepped between us and cleared her throat loudly. "I guess you three are used to authority figures being little more than figureheads, but I'm afraid that's not the case here. Fang, Nudge—if those are your real names—you two can't just wander off on your own."

Fang grabbed Nudge's forearm and hauled her out the door. Once outside, they started running, making her choice clear: take care of me, or follow them.

I kinda hoped she would pick the former. My shoulder was bleeding heavily, to the point where my entire hand was crimson and blood was dripping onto the Martinezs' wood floor. If my wing were bleeding at this rate then my feathers would be sticky and difficult to maneuver. So, even assuming that I could ignore the pain, an efficient up-and-away was still an impossibility.

Ella's mom made a sound in the back of her throat. "Ella," she said, "go downstairs and get the kit." Ella nodded and, turning on her heel, left the room.

Wait, "kit?" _What "kit?"_ Usually when people said "kit" it was in the context of _kit, the thing that holds my array of syringes that I will inject into helpless young mutants as I laugh at their pain_.

I flinched before realizing that it was possible that she meant "first-aid kit."

Unfortunately, by the time I realized this, I was already in the bathroom. Like I said before, it was a small house. The bathroom was maybe five feet long and done in white tile. It had a small scale in one corner. Sitting on the toilet lid meant that I could reach the sink by stretching out my arm, and the shower cubicle wasn't much farther away.

Did I mention that I'm claustrophobic? Spending the first eight years of my life in a dog cage did that. Having a woman hovering over me didn't help much.

"Scissors," Ella's mom said. I flinched, and she patted my (uninjured, thank God) shoulder with a few fingertips. "I'm just going to get your clothing out of the way so I can treat the wound. It'll ruin the jacket but it won't hurt you. Don't worry, I've done this plenty of times—usually on animals caught in things, though." She sighed. "The joys of being a small-town veterinarian."

I was too caught up in the irony of being treated by a _vet_ to notice the pain of having bloody cloth pulled off of an open wound. Her system of cutting me out of my clothes was quick, efficient, and (thank goodness) non-invasive. After carefully removing my backpack, she cut the right-arm sleeve of my coat off just below the shoulder, pulled lightly at the cloth, and cut along the seam to the neck, before doing the same on the left side. Once she finished, she pulled the two halves of the top off and tossed them outside of the room.

As she did this, she chatted. "So what happened, ah…"

"Maximum Ride," I said. "But everybody who stitches up my bullet wounds calls me Max."

Dr. Martinez chuckled at that but arched an eyebrow, and I knew that I wasn't off the hook.

"Uh…" I figured I might as well leave out Ella's involvement. No need to get her in trouble. "Minor disagreement got out of hand; idiot exercised his Second Amendment right."

"Well, that's unfortunate." And, dammit, she was good. That was the same tone of voice that Jeb would use when questioning Nudge about why somebodyhad downloaded fifteen different YA novels and a copy of Hacking For Dummies onto his laptop. "But I suppose that there are more pressing moments at hand." She adjusted her grip on the scissors and leaned in, tugging lightly at the fabric to move it away from the wound.

She got the sweatshirt off with no problem, not even asking why it had two massive slits in the back. Same went for the t-shirt. She didn't even mention how curvy and oddly thick my back had to be looking at this point. When she hit the undershirt, she let out an almost-inaudible gasp. I froze—this was the moment of truth.

"Max?" Dr. Martinez asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "Is that… a wing?"

"Yeah," I said.

She had me in a corner here—I could get out of the house, but I couldn't fly away, and if she called the police they might be able to find us. Three scruffy teenagers, on foot, one wounded? They'd have us in a few days if the Erasers didn't get us first. My stomach clenched. "It's… my wing."

I unfurled the injured wing, trying not to bump into her. The way our wings fold up is almost identical to the way a bird's would. They're different because they don't fold and contour to the shape of my torso—I have these things called _arms_ that get in the way. Although they're just as mobile as a bird's wings, I fold them in a straight line parallel to my spine. From behind they look like a large, feathery heart. Cute, right? If I pull them in tight, there isn't much of a bulge—but you can't hide roughly fourteen feet of muscle and feather underneath a flimsy undershirt. Not even a sweatshirt is perfect. That's why we have our cover jackets.

At this point both Ella and her mom were staring. I have to admit it: my wings look cool. Unfortunately the bullet wound on the membrane and the blood staining my feathers shades of brownish-red kind of detracted from that.

Dr. Martinez was the first to react. "Alright," she said steadily, "let's clean up your wing."

Cleaning up the wing and my shoulder hurt more than getting shot, and tears rose to my eyes more than once. First she had to rinse it off, which meant taking the showerhead and dousing my wing with water that only warmed up when she was almost done.

Then came the inspection. Even though she had soft hands and a gentle touch, Dr. Martinez wasn't hesitant about holding my shoulder still to get a good look at it. Same with my wing.

"I don't think that it hit bone," she said.

I sighed in relief. That was good news. I'm a quick healer, but my bones are… complicated. I broke my arm falling out of a tree when I was nine, and it took almost a full year to heal completely. And my wing bones are all-or-nothing. If they get broken, that's it. I'm out of the game. And how the hell would I rescue Ari if I was crippled like that? How would I do _anything_?

"But I want to do some X-rays once I finish working on you, just to be sure," she continued.

Um, X-rays? In a hospital? Surrounded by whitecoats?

For a second the world blurred, and the white tile of the bathroom seemed to stretch on forever. I wasn't able to move, couldn't breathe right, couldn't get out. It felt like somebody with iron hands was gripping my lungs, squeezing. I gasped like a fish out of water.

"Hey! Max!" Somebody waved a hand in front of my face. "Max, come on!" I wanted to tell them I was fine, but I couldn't speak. The voice continued. "Ella, give me the—"

Cold water blasted into my face and I sputtered and blinked. "Whaaaa—?"

Dr. Martinez was in front of me, staring into my face. "Okay, your pupils have stopped constricting. You've snapped out of it. Good. Now, listen. I work at a veterinary clinic. It's a wonderful small place. It has some animals recuperating from surgery or childbirth, and it's painted to look like the inside of your grandma's house. It's the weekend, so nobody's in. We're going to go there, and I'm going to examine your wing." Her voice sounded like back rubs felt. Even though she wasn't laying a hand on me, I still felt like she had wrapped her arms around me, holding me close. Like a mom would, I guess. I never had one, how would I know?

"Sorry," I said, flushing. Bad enough that I had wigged out in a complete stranger's house, I had to go ahead and think of her as a _mom_. I mean, she was, but still. One spontaneous act of kindness, and I was going soft. "I kinda…"

Almost all of us got some kind of nightmares. Day terrors, flashbacks… they were less common, and out in the Colorado mountains there wasn't much that would trigger them. And it wasn't like they made me weak. Fang was the strongest person I knew, outside of myself, and even he had gone wideyed and still when Iggy had gone for a shoulderpound but missed, hitting his sternum. But at the same time it was _humiliating_ , freaking out in a tiny bathroom in the middle of Nowhere, Arizona while a twelve-year-old and her mom watched.

I shifted, gnawing on my lip, and my wing rustled. It was bandaged by somebody who clearly knew what to do, as was my shoulder. On the wing she had used my joints as anchors for the dressing, stretching it across my membrane in straight lines that met at sharp angles. Not bad, and after a day or so I'd be able to fly with it. And Dr. Martinez had done it while I was having a panic attack, no less.

"Thanks," I said, but the word wasn't enough. I cleared my throat. "Um. Thank you so much." My voice came out gruff. "Like, if it weren't for you, I'd be grounded. And I have… somewhere to go. So."

"Not a problem," Dr. Martinez said, and smiled at me. "Now, how about Ella cleans up the bathroom, and you and I talk about what happened?"

"Ummm…" As I hemmed and hawed, she guided me up and out of the bathroom. "It's not a big deal," I muttered as she pulled out a kitchen table chair and sat down across from me.

She pushed a glass of water and a few white pills across the table, and I took them without thinking. Yeah, I know, don't take drugs from strangers—but when you spend your formative years doing what amounts to taking drugs from strangers, it kind of gives you a warped perspective. The worst that these could do was render me inoperable for a few hours before my body cleared them out.

Dr. Martinez rested her elbows on the table and cushioned her chin with her hands, leaning towards me. "You see, Max, it kind of is. If you got shot, whoever it was—they won't have a problem shooting my daughter. And I'd rather _not_ have that happen, even if it means that I have to shoot them first. But I can't do that if you don't tell me. So? Who was it?"

"Mom! Stop interrogating her!" Ella walked into the kitchen, holding a bucket full of bloody rags. Even though her tone was firm, a faint blush colored her cheeks. "It was about Ortiz, it was the usual kids."

"Oh, Ella." Dr. Martinez sighed, going from vengeful to disappointed in the space of a second. "What have I told you about them?"

Ella narrowed her lips as she crossed the room, hip-checking the front door open. Outside there was the sound of clanging metal and when she came back in, her bucket was empty.

"I have to rinse the bathroom down," she said dully. "You'll want to drive Max to the clinic."

" _No_ , Ella, you're going to sit at the table with us and talk. Why didn't you use your Mace? Young lady, if I find that you've been being irresponsible with your self-defense, then—" She started talking in Spanish, the words quick and harsh and completely unintelligible.

Ella responded in kind, folding her arms over her chest as she argued. The two of them snapped at each other for a few moments, Ella's tone growing more and more petulant. Even though the table that the three of us were sitting at was tiny, I felt like they were a mile away from both each other and me.

Dr. M took a deep breath, and that's how I could tell the argument was over. Jeb did the same thing. "Alright," she said, her tone so soft that I knew she was speaking to herself. "Calm down." She closed her eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened again most of the anger had left them. "Max, I'm going to drive you to the clinic. Ella, you can stay at home if you want, but if you do I expect the bathroom to be clean when I get back."

Ella leaned back on her chair so it was on its back legs and nodded, her head hanging over the back. "Yes, Mom."

The drive to the clinic was uneventful and so short that it would have made sense to walk, if it weren't for the fact that a bloody, cut-up undershirt was all that was covering my chest. Oh, and the wings. Did I mention them recently?

That meant that I had to stay in the car while Dr. M went into the clinic and found me a poncho to drape over my shoulders so I could walk on three feet of sidewalk. I felt kind of ridiculous, but at least it was keeping me out of a dog cage. And yeah, I came close to falling at least twice. The blood loss made me dizzy, and the slippery floors didn't help.

As Dr. M had said, the clinic was empty. There wasn't even a receptionist behind the desk. The floor tiles were an odd shade of light yellow, and the walls were painted brown. Everything smelled like floor polish with a faint hint of wet dog.

The X-ray machine was in a back room and consisted of a table with an expensive-looking supercamera raised over it. The table was cold enough to freeze me through my shirt. I ended up shivering as we waited for the pictures to print, gooseflesh forming as I mulled over the possibilities.

Anything could be happening right now. Erasers could be tracking us down, ready to drag us into the School. Fang and Nudge could be getting caught by the police and questioned. Dr. M could be calling the FBI to report an Avian-American in her clinic. Iggy and the Gasman could be… well, who _knew_ what they could be doing.

Not much, with Jeb around, but they'd have found a way around him. They always did. Or, worse, they would try to be helpful but end up messing something up and traumatizing Angel in the process. Like the time with the fake octopus—I still hadn't forgiven them for that.

And this whole situation would scare Angel, too—she was smart for her age but even a smart six-year-old was still six. And with the way Gazzy and Iggy hung out, she would get lonely. Nudge wasn't there for her to have somebody to talk to, and neither was Ari.

Ari—poor kid. He hadn't asked for any of this. He hadn't even been able to defend himself… and I had failed him where it mattered the most. My hands balled into fists, and I felt the need to punch something. No, not just something—an Eraser. I wanted to punch an Eraser in its stupid, freakishly wolfy face, and yell at it _DON'T EVER HURT MY LITTLE BROTHER AGAIN, YOU JERK!_

I mean, it would eat me five seconds afterward, but I wouldn't care. I was just. So. Angry.

I only snapped out of it when Dr. M walked into the room

"Max?" she asked. "Your shoulder isn't broken, and the bullet didn't hit any of the bones in your wing, but there's something I'd like to talk to you about…"

* * *

 _There isn't much that I did in this chapter that JP didn't already do. This is not a very plotty chapter. It does, however, have a fair amount of Dr. M. What do you think of her characterization? Does it mesh well with what little we got in canon or does it contradict it entirely?_

 _Also, writing Max POV is always a party, if parties are accompanied by large amounts of self-doubt. Do you like "this" Max? Is she IC? Is she human? Please let me know in a review!_


	14. Jeb is Dead

_Tokoloshe Monster beta-read this, and she continues to be awesome._

* * *

"Fang?" Nudge asked. "Don't you think we should do something other than, um…" She gestured at Lake Mead stretching out before them, the desert sun shining down on its surface. The two of them had stripped down to their undershirts and jeans, and now sat by its shore. Both of them had taken advantage of the isolation to unfurl their wings. "Like, sit here? I feel like we should go back to Max. What if Ella's mom turns out to be a psycho? Shouldn't we be there to help her? By her I mean Max, not Ella's mom, that's weird I wouldn't help a psycho. But wait; don't we have to get Ari? Shouldn't we be trying to get Ari? I mean the School could do a _lot_ in like two days, and like I don't want Ari to end up as some horrible mutant freak just because we stopped to sit by a lake I mean _we've_ already been through enough he shouldn't have to go through it too—oh, God, what about the other kids in the School? What about them? Can we help them oh my God I feel so sick. Those poor kids, what can we do to help them? Fang I think we should go on the news. I don't care if I get put in a zoo or something I don't want any more kids in cages. Oh my God would they put the other kids in the zoo?"

Fang nodded.

"You're sure? Even though they had spent their lives in cages?"

Fang nodded again.

"That's _horrible_ oh my God. Fang, why are people so horrible? Do they hate us just because we're different? I mean we couldn't exactly help being born with freaking wings because of freaking scientists putting stuff in us why would they hate us for something we couldn't control?"

"They're scared," Fang said. He was reclining with his hands behind his head, using his backpack to prop up his lower back.

"They're scared because we're different? Well, that's stupid. Wouldn't all men, be, like, scared of women or something? I mean men and women are different. Shouldn't we all be like terrified of cats or something? Kittens are pretty freaking different from us, you know? God, people _suck_ sometimes. What if you had two kids and one had red hair, would you freak out? Like I mean I would freak out if I had kids, because I'm like eleven and babymaking is gross, also I'm almost positive boys have some weird kind of virus, except you Fang you don't have like a virus I mean you don't act like you have a virus. I mean, neither do Gazzy and Iggy so maybe mutant boys are immune? Not that I would want to like make babies with a mutant boy. Oh my God I'm like eleven that's gross, boys are gross, but do you know what I mean? People are weird, Fang."

Fang nodded.

"Hey," Nudge said, looking towards her right where birds circled around the cliffs. "Are those raptors? Can we go check out their nest? 'Cause like they're birds, and aren't we part raptor or something, except all our wings are different colors but they're shaped the same? Hey Fang, can we go check out the birds? I mean we're like related to them, I mean we're like also part bird; maybe we can talk to birds? Can we talk to birds?"

Fang shook his head.

"Can I go swimming?"

Fang shook his head again.

"Not even if I take my jeans off so they don't get wet?"

Fang shrugged.

" _Fine_ ," Nudge said, "Be that way."

She wiggled out of her jeans and ran into the water in her leggings and undershirt. She had gotten the leggings at Goodwill. They were supposed to be for jogging, but she wore them all the time because they were blue and sparkly. Like, what if she was in a fight and her jeans got ripped up? She'd have something super-cute under it. Besides, like this she could pretend that she was a superhero, hiding her superhero suit underneath her clothes.

As the water closed over her head, she shut her eyes and then opened them before starting to swim off toward the center of the lake. Swimming in the cool water on a hot day like this calmed her down, helped her get her mind off stupid Fang and how rude he could be. Like, God, she was just trying to talk to him. What was his deal? Did he hate her or something? Did he wish that he were with Max instead of his annoying kid sister? Nudge frowned as she treaded water. What if nobody, nobody ever, wanted to talk to her? What if everybody ever just… hated her? Her stomach clenched and something bitter rose up into her mouth.

She shook her head. _Focus on the mission_ , that's what Jeb and Max would have said. Except they weren't here.

Max was with Ella's mom, Iggy and Gazzy and Angel were back in Colorado, and Ari was stuck in California. That's not what the Flock was supposed to do. Flocks weren't supposed to split up. They were supposed to stay together and be strong and support one another, the same way that families stuck together.

She bit her lip and dived back underneath the surface of the lake, swimming underwater with long strokes. She could go for ten minutes without needing air, two minutes more than Max and Fang. Ari had to breathe after three minutes. Why? Why were any of them—

When her feet touched the bottom of the lake, she crouched for a moment and launched herself up. As soon as her head broke above the water, she breathed in air that she wouldn't have needed for at least five minutes. All around her was flat—the ground, the sky. The cliffs were like mountains from this perspective. She could fly higher than them; see things that most people wouldn't be able to see.

Nudge swam for the shore, pulling herself out of the water and plopping down next to Fang. Grains of salt and sand clung to her leggings, her skin, her hair, her wings. "Don't you think we should go back and look for Max? Don't you think that would be a good idea? I'm worried about her and it's getting late and I just don't want her to get hurt, you know, what if she ends up—are you paying attention to me?"

Fang nodded.

"God, you could at least _show_ it," Nudge groused, and folded her arms over her chest. "Anyway, look, we can grab Max and haul tail and maybe steal a car or something so she isn't flying on a bad wing, I just don't want to sit here doing nothing, because _mad scientists_ are experimenting on _my baby brother_ like right now, you know?"

"We're not stealing a car," Fang said.

"How else are we going to get around with Ari?" Nudge demanded. "Jesus God, Fang," she paused to pull out one of her last energy bars out of her bag, unwrap it, and shove half of it in her mouth. She continued talking through crumbs. "It's like you don't even think about the future." She rolled her eyes, but then her gaze focused on the horizon. "Hey, are those birds? 'Cause they look like—Fang! It's Iggy and Gazzy and Angel! Ohmigodwhathappened? They were supposed to stay with Jeb!"

Fang shrugged.

Nudge grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, pushing him down into the sand. "Noooo, you can't just go all Mister Stoic on us here, something happened! Sometimes I just want to hit you, Fang, you know? You don't ever act like anything bothers you and I don't know how you feel about anything!"

Two pairs of feet _thudded_ behind them. Nudge spun, only to see Gazzy collapse face-first onto the sand. He didn't even try to tuck his wings in. Angel groaned and stumbled over to him, pulling on his arm. She fell down too, face-planting into his back.

Iggy landed last, a good couple of meters behind them. Nudge headed over to him, half-jumping over one of Gazzy's wings. "What are you doing here? Max told you to stay back home!" But once she was closer, she saw what a wreck he was. His eyes were shadowed and he looked pastier than usual.

And when he spoke, he sounded exhausted. Even though he was snapping. "What does Max think she's doing? Why the hell aren't you guys in the air?"

Nudge's stomach twisted as she thought of how Max had ran after she had been shot, favoring her injured shoulder, looking ready to pass out from the pain. Fang had had to half-carry her. "Max got hurt," she said, staring at her bare feet.

That was when she noticed that Iggy was covered in dried blood from the knees down.

"Oh my God! What happened to you? Are you okay?" Even to her ears, her voice sounded high-pitched. "Oh my God, are you still bleeding?"

"Nudge. I'm fine." Iggy blinked a few times. "Just tired."

She launched herself at him then, wrapping her twiggy arms around him and squeezing tight, standing on her tiptoes so she could rest her chin on his shoulder.

He wasn't dead, and neither were Gazzy and Angel, and they could meet up with Max and get Ari and go back to Jeb, but…

"What made you leave?"

Iggy tensed, his muscles going stiff under her arms.

* * *

"…May I examine you?" Dr. M asked. "It's not every day that I get a patient with—well, with wings. I want to know more about you, so if you show up again hurt in some other way I'll know what to do." She swallowed.

I froze. What would happen if I said 'no?' Would she tell me to take care of my own freaking shoulder? Kick me out of her clinic and her house? Jeb had told us, time and time again, _don't trust them if they're not family_. Dr. M and Ella were hospitable but they weren't _family_. They weren't the be-all, end-all. So the right answer, the one I should have given, was _no_. But the answer that I felt would help me more in the long run was _yes_. If I got onto the good doctor's good side, well, I wouldn't be wondering where to stay while my wing healed up. It would only take a day or so, but a day or so meant a lot when there wasn't a roof over your head.

"Sure," I said, and unfurled my wings. "Go ahead."

She started with the basics—blood pressure, heart rate, eyesight, hearing—the stuff that Jeb would do every month or so, to make sure that we were still in good shape. The examination didn't tell me anything I wasn't already aware of: my blood pressure was low (typical, I spent roughly three hours a day training), my heart rate was low but loud, I had air sacs in addition to lungs (to help me breathe more efficiently when I was flying), and larger-than-average spaces between my collar- and shoulder-bone. As she measured, she chatted. Turned out that the bullet had passed cleanly through my shoulder and wing, no shrapnel or bones to worry about. I had caught a lucky break.

After all the measuring was done, she weighed me. "Five-eight and one-forty, right?" I asked after she wrote down the numbers.

"One-thirty-nine," she said. "I'm surprised at that—If I had to gauge your weight I'd put you at fifteen pounds lighter, maybe more."

"My wings account for about fifteen percent of my body weight," I told her. "Most people don't think to add them."

If you want to get technical about things, I'm underweight or close to it—all of us are. We have to eat a lot just to maintain our weight, and when you factor in training, that number gets even higher. But we're almost all of us at a weight healthy enough not to cause alarm.

Except for Nudge, constantly hungry and constantly talking. Standing at 5"4, she weighed in at a hundred pounds after a big meal. If she bent over, I could see her ribs and her spine reaching through her skin like they were trying to get out. It worried me sometimes that she wouldn't be able to eat enough to grow like the rest of us had. Even though she had spunk and put up a good fight, an Eraser or two could outmuscle her without much trouble. And I couldn't impress it enough on her—she had to win, she had to keep winning, she couldn't ever, ever afford to lose. One of the first lessons I had learned from the School was that weakness meant death. It didn't matter if you were strong twenty-three hours of the day, that one last hour was when you would die. You couldn't lose anything, not even for a second.

"And that's it!" Dr. M closed her notebook with a _clap_ , making me jump. "Oh—sorry about that. No loud noises."

"No, it's okay. I'm just on edge after…" I made my hand into a finger gun and mimed firing it. It was actually because of years of living in a cage and being tested by mad scientists, but I figured that she wouldn't need to know that.

"Well," she said, "Given your higher body temperature but lack of fever symptoms, I'm willing to bet that you run at a faster rate than usual. So while I can't tell _you_ how long it'll take for your shoulder to heal, I can say that it should be less than a week."

"I'll be fine by tomorrow evening," I told her.

Her eyes widened. "That's so cool! Increased metabolic rates _and_ regenerative capabilities!" She cut herself off. "Sorry. …Here, come on, let's go back to the car."

I didn't fall on the walk back, but I did have to walk a lot slower. My shoulder wasn't bleeding as much anymore, and my wing had already begun to scab over. On our way out, Dr. M picked up the X-rays. "You can take them, if that's what you want. But if you let me have them, I'd keep them in a safe place."

 _You can't trust anybody that isn't family, Max_. Like this woman was a mad scientist? I scoffed at the Jeb-voice in my head. Please. I could tell what a mad scientist looked like, and she wasn't one. So I made an executive decision based on what I had already observed—you know, like a good leader would. "You can keep the X-rays," I told her.

She was grinning when she got into the car. "So," she said as she started the engine, "Are there any others like you?"

"Well, Fang and Nudge—" Wait. What was I doing? Trusting this woman not to go to the news was one thing. Giving her X-rays of my mutant bodywas another, but talking about my Flock? Well—she had already seen Fang and Nudge. She would put two and two together. "Yeah, they're winged. I don't, in a general sense, know if there are any others like me." That was true. Jeb had never mentioned other bird kids, and I had never asked. As far as I knew, neither had the Flock. None of us had hit our "questioning the meaning of life" phase yet—except maybe for Fang, judging from the amount of black he wore.

"I'm guessing that you're acting as the parent," she said.

I laughed. Me, a mom? _Hell_ no. There would be no way I could keep the entire Flock in line. "Um, more like… a big sister."

"Well, I'm just glad that your big-sister instincts kicked in to save my daughter," Dr. M said. "Speaking of, do you mind waiting back at home with her while I go out and get some stuff? I have a surprise for the two of you."

"S-sure," I said as we pulled up next to the house, trying to ignore the growing feeling of nervousness. "Not a problem." I mean, it wouldn't be, right? Ella seemed like a nice kid—weird around her mom and with a penchant for getting in trouble, but a nice kid. We wouldn't have a big problem with each other. We would get along fine, except for the whole _wings_ thing.

Right?

* * *

"No," Nudge said, shaking her head, eyes wide. "No, I don't believe it. Somebody messed up, somebody missed something. There's no way that's possible!"

"Nudge, I'm sorry," Angel said, and took her sister's hand. "We all saw what happened."

The older girl let out a small, choked noise. "Don't say that, Angel! Don't ever say that! We're proof; we're living proof that the impossible happens. You can't let yourself think that just because something looks a certain way, that it's set in stone for all eternity—I mean, if astronauts had that attitude then we'd never have been on the moon and Max wouldn't have chosen her last name—oh God, _Max_."

Iggy knelt so he was eye-to-eye with her and put a hand on her shoulder, rubbing it gently with his thumb. "Hey, hey, it's okay. Now how about you tell us what happened to Max?"

"She got shot," Nudge sobbed. Her face went back into her hands. "She was running away from some guys and they shot her in the shoulder and now she's back with some vet lady."

"Breathe, Nudge. Take a deep breath." Iggy moved his hands from her shoulders to her wrists, and pulled her hands gently away from her face. "Okay, now talk to me about eagles. Talk to me about… golden eagles."

"Golden eagles," Nudge said shakily. "Latin name _Aquila chrysaetos_ , which is actually really pretty and what I would name a kid. I wish my name was Aquila. Or Chrysaetos. It's just so pretty…" She swallowed her tears and kept going, Iggy's hold on her firm. Concrete. She focused on that, the way his hands were wrapped around her wrists, anchoring her in the real world, in the present moment, and not her thoughts. "Dark brown, golden feathers on the napes, build large nests in cliffs. Wings are long and broad, designed for long-term flight, fifth-largest in-in-in _extant_ eagle species. On the tips of the wing the feathers look like fingers. Might be confused for raptors if you're stupid, because they're a lot—a lot bigger. Five times the weight of the _buteo_ family, which is saying a lot." She sniffed. "I think I'm okay now, Ig."

"Okay?" Iggy repeated.

She nodded. "Okay."

He let go of her hands and turned to Fang. "Where's Max?"

Fang said, "She told us to stay here."

"That's not what I'm asking you," Iggy told him. "I'm not asking you what she told you two to do. I'm asking you where she is and why she isn't here."

"Like Nudge told you, she got shot because she was fighting and now she's getting it fixed up," Angel said. Her voice was quiet but still had an odd lyrical quality to it, a soothing sound that contrasted with the topic she was discussing.

"Where?" Iggy asked, eyes darting from one source of noise to another. " _Where_ was she shot?"

"In the shoulder but it also clipped her wing," Nudge said, the words coming out in a tearful rush, "Okay so there was this girl, and she was like my age and she was getting bullied by these guys and they were _huge_ , okay, like not tall like you are Iggy but like tall like Fang is and muscular and fat I guess, and they were bullying her, so Max was all _let's go save her!_ And then Fang was all like _no, but fine_ , so we went in and kicked butt and got her out of there, but one of the guys he had a _gun_ and he shot Max and then we went home with the girl and her mom's fixing Max up now… and now… and now…"

Before she could go on, Iggy spoke. "Youlet Maxstay with a _stranger_?" His eyes were fixed on Fang—or, to be more accurate, Fang's mouth.

Nudge positioned herself between the two boys before Fang could speak and tried to start talking, but Angel shook her head.

"She told us to stay here," Fang repeated.

"Well, the situation's changed, hasn't it?" Iggy snapped. "I'm not going to get into why you made that stupid-ass decision in the first place, but now you're going to fix it. You're going to take us to that house, we're going to get Max out of whatever situation she's in, we're going to steal a car, and then we're going to use the car to get Ari. And then we're going to find somewhere new to goddamn _live_ , because Erasers stormed the house!"

" _Or_ we can accept that Max is the leader and the one making decisions," Fang said. "I took Nudge out because I had to think about her, and now we have the other kids." He paused. "And we're not stealing a car."

" _Excuse me_?" Nudge turned to face Fang. Her voice had stopped shaking, and her eyes were bright with anger and tears. "I'm just as good in a fight as you are! I can kick just as much butt as you do, and just because I'm younger or whatever doesn't mean that I'm a sack of potatoes for you to drag around. Don't treat me like I'm not capable, because I _am_. I can outrun you, outfly you, and even though I don't have super-long, lustrous emo hair, that doesn't mean that I'm just a kid sister!"

Fang shrugged. "Your ability to kick ass in a fight is paralleled only by your inability to keep quiet," he said. "If we're going to get Max, you're staying back with the kids."

Nudge began to cry, and wiped away the tears angrily as she spoke. "I can too shut up! At least I can communicate plans, unlike _somebody_ who just relies on dragging people around by their arm! What are you going to do if _you_ get Max, grab her shoulder and drag her out?"

"Who said anything about not bringing Nudge?" Iggy demanded. "Of course we're bringing Nudge. We're bringing the Gasman and Angel too; splitting up has done nothing good for us." The three older bird kids were standing now, forming a rough triangle. At such close proximity, the half-foot height difference between Nudge and Fang was obvious, but she was still holding her own.

"See?" she said to Fang, crossing her arms and popping out a hip. "I'm coming, because we're a _Flock_. We're not a group of random mutants that meets up to battle evil, like the X-men or whatever. We're a _family_ , and that means nobody gets left behind or forgotten."

Fang sighed. "Fine."

The three of them turned to the Gasman and Angel. Angel had her hands over her ears and her eyes scrunched shut, and the Gasman had his arms around her. "Are you three done fighting?" he asked.

Nudge blinked. "Y-yeah."

" _Good_ ," Angel said. She could have cut glass with that tone. "Because I'm scared and nervous too, and you guys just act like I'm a little kid and you can talk about me and what you're going to make me do _in front of my face_."

"Sorry, Angel." Iggy was the first to say it, and Nudge was a second behind him. Fang nodded.

"Now," Iggy said, "where's Max?"

* * *

I was sitting on Ella's bed, trying to ignore the itch in my healing wing. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to look at. Ella's room was on the small side, with a blue-white-brown color scheme. The only piece of furniture aside from the neatly made bed was a small bookshelf filled with authors I didn't recognize.

"Listen," Ella said. "I'm sorry about… about earlier."

"When you were fighting with your mom?" I asked. When she nodded, I shrugged my uninjured shoulder. "It's okay, it's not like I understood any of it."

She blinked. "But you're… sorry. It's just that you look, you know, Hispanic. Kinda."

That gave me pause. None of us really knew what we were, aside from "part bird." Nudge was black, I was some kind of brown—along with Fang, who _might_ have been part Asian, and the others were white, or at least _mostly_ white.

It was a mess, really, but a mess that didn't bother most of us. Unless it was a rainy day and we were stuck in the house and Nudge wanted to play "guess where we might be living if we weren't mutant bird freaks."

"I mean, I might be," I said. "But—"

"But you're mostly just from Maine?" She asked, and we grinned at each other. As the grins faded, awkward silence crept in, and I struggled to find something to talk about.

"So, um," I said. "You're in…"

"Going into seventh grade," Ella said, and then added, "But I tutor eighth-graders for English." She smiled.

I fumbled for words. It was obvious that she was proud of it, but what was I supposed to say? "Good for you"? "Maybe you could tutor me"? What grade was I even supposed to be in, in normal-school years? I settled for something nice and non-confrontational.

"How is middle school?"

She shrugged. "Some of the boys are jerks. Some of the girls are, too. And everybody says it gets worse in high school. But I do have some friends, and I'm in clubs."

"Clubs?" I had seen TV shows about them, on lazy Saturdays, but I had never been in one. Mutant, remember? Wings and a public school education don't mix, so Jeb gave us classes at the E-house.

"Yeah. I'm in JSA and GSA and I take MMA outside of the school—oh, and Lit Club." She drummed her fingers on her leg. "It's not, um, not a lot. There's a kid, Sanchez, he's taking high-school classes already so he can take the APs and get a scholarship. He's a genius. He wants to go to MIT."

I nodded like I knew what half of those letters stood for.

"Hey," she said, uncrossing her legs and standing up, "I could make you coffee, or something. We have coffee. And my mom said that she was making a surprise, right?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, yeah, we'll make coffee."

The surprise was chocolate-chip cookies, which Dr. M, Ella, and I made together. That's right. I, Maximum Ride, made something—without burning it, or putting in too much sugar, or forgetting to turn the oven on, or turning the oven on too early. And the best part? We made them from scratch.

"These taste like heaven," I groaned, shoving one into my mouth. It was still hot from the oven, and it just about melted into a heavenly mess of chocolaty goo.

Ella giggled. "Try dunking it in coffee."

I did, and let me just say this—if there's something beyond this life, I hope I go there when I die, because they'll have an unlimited supply of fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies dunked in coffee. As my eyes were rolling back into my head, somebody knocked on the door.

"I'll get it," Dr. M said. "Ella, go to your room. Max, you go with her."

Ella nodded and walked off. I stood up, still dizzy. Dr. M had done a lot for me, putting her neck on the line by taking in a strange kid off the street. I wasn't going to just let her face a potential lynch mob headed by Shotgun's parents all alone. "I'm staying right here," I said.

A muscle in her jaw twitched. "Fine," she said. "But you're staying where you are." She headed for the door but didn't open it. "Who's there?"

"Hey! It's the kids who were with the girl that got shot! Um, can you let us in so we can make sure that you— _mmf! Gecherhanoffmamouf!_ So we can make sure that you're not some kind of— _no, I can handle this_ —evil child kidnapper? Or, like, a mad scientist or something? Haha, that would be ridiculous, right? I swear we're not armed."

I blinked. What were Nudge and Fang doing here? I had told them to stay away. I had told them to leave, and wait for me. What had they deemed _so important_ that it couldn't wait a day or two? Jeb had left me in charge and it hadn't taken them more than a day to ignore that.

"Let them in," I said. "I know them."

This was going to be good.

When Dr. M opened the door, my jaw dropped. It wasn't just Nudge and Fang. No, that would have made too much sense. It was freaking _everybody_.

"What are you guys doing here?" I snapped. "I told you to stay back at the E-house!" I could have gone on, but then I noticed them—actually noticed them. Nudge and the Gasman's eyes were puffy and red, and Angel was softly crying. Fang's jaw was tight and Iggy looked like he was three seconds away from punching the first person in his way. "What is it?" I asked, making a conscious effort to modulate my tone. "What's wrong?"

Iggy swallowed. "Jeb is dead."

* * *

 _It's been a while since I wrote this chapter, so I don't really have much to say. What do y'all think of it?_


	15. Changing Faces

_Thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to everybody who reviewed in-between updates: pinfeather, drift, joan of radius. Double super extra magical girl thanks to Birdwatched for your review, like I'm super incoherent but thank you so so so much it's so sweet of you to say those things!_

* * *

 _He was falling, falling—_

Ari woke up with a clenched stomach and fear pumping through his body. His eyes darted from left to right, looking for a threat. He found none. In a weird, mad-science way, the dormitory had a domestic feeling to it. Kids were talking, a few were fighting, there was a boy hanging upside-down with his shirt off—just like home. Late-morning sunlight was streaming through the windows.

The bird kids were standing by the door. Jane was playing rock-paper-scissors with Peter and Iggy II, while Fang II was using the wall to support his back as he stood on his hands.

Amy was curled up at the other end of the bed. She looked almost peaceful in sleep. Wendy was standing over her, staring down. Suddenly her eyes cut to Ari, and her gaze was as sharp as a knife, cutting through the chatter.

Ari startled, accidentally kicking Amy. She bumped into the wall, banging her head against it. "Sorry!" Why couldn't he do anything right?

Wendy laughed. "It's not a big deal, that's how I wake her up."

"All… right," Ari said, and shook Amy, barely applying force. "Wake up?"

"Mup." Amy curled up into a ball, now caught halfway between the wall and the bed.

"Ugh. Ari, get out of the way; I'll get her up. It's pretty much my job."

Ari flushed and slid out of the bunk. "S-sorry."

Amy's eyes slid open. "Don't pick on him," she said, her voice more of a mumble. She hauled herself into an upright position and yawned. "W-" Another yawn cut her off, but she blinked and continued. "We'll fight you."

Wendy ignored her. "Get into clean clothes or you're going to be late for training," was her only response before walked off toward the other bird kids.

They were all already dressed in loose mesh shorts and cotton tops with ITEX written across the chest. Jane tossed an identical set to Ari as Fang II came down from his handstand.

Ari changed in the bathroom, flinching whenever a yellow-eyed-kid got too close. Although they didn't rush him, he was glad to be out of their way.

As it turned out, morning training was held outside the School, in a large, fenced-off area that was about two square miles. It was officiated over by a smiling youngish woman with dark hair and square glasses and an older, balding black man who didn't mind shouting at everybody to run faster, goddamnit.

Ari stuck to the back of the group, praying that neither adult would notice him. The yellow-eyed kids ran together in front of him, a pack full of snarled insults, attempted trip-ups, and hip checks. Their running was more fighting than anything else. But just by looking at them, Ari felt that they could go a lot faster if they were sprinting. They had the muscle to kick and keep kicking.

The bird kids were ahead of the yellow-eyed ones, running fast but at a controlled pace. Jane had the lead, with Amy as a close second, but all of them looked like they could keep going for days.

The run only stopped when the afternoon sun was high in the sky. The other kids stretched and started heading back into the School, Jane throwing the track a wistful glance, but Ari couldn't make himself walk another step.

He fell flat on his back and stared at the cloudless sky. That was the most he had run, ever, in his entire life. He couldn't feel his legs. It would take him a week to catch his breath. Maybe his feet would fall off soon, and then Max would have to drag him everywhere because he couldn't walk. Or Iggy and the Gasman could build him fake feet. That would be pretty cool. Except they weren't here.

Amy poking him in the side distracted him from a burgeoning flashback to that horrible afternoon. Ari grunted and looked at her. She wasn't even panting. "Get up, you'll be covered in dirt."

When Ari managed to stand up, Amy grabbed his wrist and dragged him back to the dorm room. "Shower fast," she said. "And then we're going to get food and go exploring."

Ari didn't protest. Even though Amy could be bossy, she was plenty of fun to be around, and besides, he'd be able to get information to give to Jeb when the Flock rescued him. Jeb would be so proud of him for that. He might even say "Good job, son," with the proud look in his eyes he got whenever Max did something new, like back flip off the roof and still launch herself straight into the air. Ari smiled as he showered and dressed. This was going to be awesome.

When he got out of the bathroom, Amy was waiting for him. She was already dressed in all black, down to the band holding her hair in a ponytail. None of the other bird kids were with her, and even most of the yellow-eyed kids were heading out.

"Hey." Amy held up her hands like they were pistols. "Pretend like we're on a movie poster for a second."

Ari complied, standing so that they could each see half of the room. He even pointed his fingers like she was doing, even though he had grown out of that _ages_ ago and moved on to water guns. And homemade Nerf pistols, and stink bombs, and whatever else Iggy and Gazzy threw together for just about every occasion.

"So right now…" Amy paused. "I guess you could say that we're standing _back to black_."

Ari snickered, and his shoulders bumped up against her wings.

"Okay," Amy said. "Let's get lunch."

She dragged Ari by the wrist to the cafeteria, weaving her way through the hallways like a fish through water. She secured a spot near the front of the line with a similar ease, elbowing her way past a few of the other kids.

"S-sorry," Ari said as he slammed into somebody's chest. When he looked up, his stomach sank like a rock.

" _You will be_ ," Robert mouthed, and bared his teeth.

Ari flinched back. Robert's teeth were spikes. They didn't even look human; they looked like something out of a documentary or a horror movie.

Before either boy could do something stupid, like run away in panic or commit an act of homicide, Amy interrupted.

She shoved a sandwich into Ari's hands and walked them over to a free table, where she proceeded to completely demolish her food in under a minute. When she had finished, she stared at Ari, who sighed and put his sandwich down.

Amy reached for his hand.

He yanked it back before she could grab it. "Hey, how about we get some of the others to come with us?" Jane had been pretty annoyed last night, but that didn't mean that Fang II or Iggy II or Wendy would mind. Peter was kind of a jerk, though.

Amy held up a hand balled into a fist, and started counting off reasons on her fingers. "One: I've asked before and they've said no. They go help the poor babies in cages whenever they have free time. Two: I'm supposed to be helping the poor babies in cages too, and if there are lotsof kids missing then we'll all get in trouble. Three: Even if they wouldn't get in trouble for being missing, more people means more noise means we all get caught sooner. Got it?"

Ari nodded.

"Let's go, then." Amy grabbed Ari's hand. This time, instead of running, she walked, which made keeping up easier—not that Ari had any idea _where_ he was going, but at least he was going there at the same pace as her.

They ended up at the end of a narrow hallway. It was dimly lit, with a locked door and a ventilation grate. If the grate in the dormitory bathroom could fit a Golden Retriever, then this grate might have been able to fit a Chihuahua.

"Do we have to sneak through that?" Ari asked, dreading the answer.

Amy shook her head. "You'd have to dislocate your shoulders _and_ your hips. It'd be fun, but…" She gave the grate a longing glance. "…Not today. We're going through the door."

Ari looked at the door again and saw a keypad beneath the knob.

"The passcode is seventeen, eighty-two, sixty-one," Amy said. "Remember that for when we get back."

Amy entered the code and opened the door, walking into the stairwell beyond it. The door swung shut behind them as they headed down. Even in sneakers, Ari felt like he was making too much noise. Like anybody could hear him.

"Are you sure that there's no camera?" he asked.

Amy nodded and jumped down the last two steps to hold the door on the landing open for Ari. When he walked through it, she pulled it shut behind them.

She headed past him and started off down the hallway.

"So Wendy told me they keep this place shut down unless they're processing," she said, "which means that it's perfect for exploring. Most of the ek- egg- sex- the _testing_ labs are full of people. But the only people I've ever seen come down here are the janitors."

"What's processing?" Ari asked.

"It's- they- I-" Amy scowled. "You'll see. It's cool."

They walked down the hall in silence, sometimes turning left or right, until Amy pointed at a door left ajar. Written on it in thick black letters was a six-digit string of numbers and the word **PROCESSING**.

The room was huge, and filled with cylinders that were as three times as tall as Ari and as wide as one of Amy's fully extended wings. Each one had a small keypad on its right side, and inside there was an oblong container made of dark plastic that a door on the front could open into.

Although the lighting was dim, like in the hallway, it wasn't hard to make out the orange color of the liquid filling the cylinders or even the small bubbles in the containers that rose slowly to the surface. In fact each container gave off an orangey glow, courtesy of the tube of fluorescent lighting circling the top.

Thanks to that glow, Ari could see the outline of what looked like a control desk by the right wall, and thick plastic tubes that ran across the floor behind the cylinders.

Ari whistled. This was _awesome_. It was like on television, or in a comic book! The only bad part was the gross smell, and that wasn't even so bad. Any second now, the mad scientist would show up, and—oh. Crap.

"Um, Amy, you're _sure_ they aren't doing processing right now?" Ari rubbed the back of his neck. "One hundred percent positive? Completely and totally?"

Amy nodded. "What, you don't believe me?" She waved a hand, but even the casual gesture didn't belay the tension in her voice. "Don't worry about it. You can even stay here if you want." She turned and headed for the door.

"Wait! Where are you going?" Ari reached out for her, but she was too fast.

"I'm going exploring," she said, and then walked out of his sight.

Ari stared at the now-empty room, at once both angry and sad. It would have been cool to wander around with Amy, but instead he got worried and bothered her. All because of stupid Jeb and stupid Max and the stupid Erasers getting him kidnapped. His lips pursed, and he kicked out… and hit the metal of the control panel.

"'s not _my_ fault," he muttered. "I didn't _want_ to get kidnapped." He kicked the control panel again, his hands balled into fists. _God knows that the Flock doesn't have a good reason to come and get me_. Why would they? He was the outcast, the tagalong, the boring one. The deadweight. Even though they were nice to him they didn't want him around—wasn't that obvious? They were probably having a party at the E-shaped house. They were going to leave him here _forever_ , the same way that the whitecoats had left Amy with the other bird kids. The same way that Amy had just left him here.

She was probably going back to the bird kids by now; ready to tell Wendy a joke about how she left that _loser_ alone in a room full of weird tanks.

Stupid bird kids. Stupid scientists. Stupid him, not jumping out of the helicopter. Maybe if he had wings he wouldn't keep jamming his foot in his mouth. Maybe if he had wings he wouldn't be so left out all the time.

"Hey, runt." The voice came out of the shadows, and Ari spun around, making sure that his back was against the control panel. _Don't let them close in behind you_ , Jeb had said. _Your back is your weak spot._

"Who is it?" Ari tried to sound tough, like he was Max and he knew that he was tougher than everybody else in the room, and more of a smart-alec to boot.

Instead of answering, Robert just stepped out of the shadows. Ari gulped, and tried to shrink into the metal. Robert grinned and cracked his knuckles. "You know, we never got to finish that little conversation we were having when your runt ass showed up here." He took a step forward. "The conversation where I was beating you into next week."

Ari swallowed. _Conceal your fear. Say something witty._ "You know, that was stupid. That was a stupid line. _You're_ stupid."

" _You're_ stupid," Robert snarled.

"You're, um, you can't think of your own insults. Because you're a loser," Ari retorted. "And you're ugly. And- and- and unoriginal!"

"Alright, that's it. You're dead." Robert lunged for Ari's throat. Ari just managed to jump out of the way, and Robert crashed into the control panel.

As he struggled to pull himself out, Ari looked at the room around him. There was no way he could win this fight. Robert was stronger, faster, and tougher. The only person who could help him was Amy, and Ari didn't know where she was or how to find her.

He couldn't afford to get lost. The look in Robert's eyes resembled that of a wolf hunting its prey. If Robert caught him, he would die.

Ari took advantage of the half second he had. He fell backward, his legs slipping over the floor as he hid behind one of the tanks toward the side of the room. He couldn't escape Robert, couldn't beat him in a fair fight, and there was nothing big enough in the room to knock him out for good. The only thing left to do would be to use Robert's size against him. Ari huffed out a breath as crouched behind the cylinder, and tried to piece together a course of action. Maybe—

Robert snarled as he got to his feet, and Ari panicked. Like a scared rabbit he darted from one hiding spot to another, behind a cylinder that was further back. As he ran he banged his head into a door handle and almost fell. He caught himself in time, but his stumbling around made him to trip over the thick tubes running along the floor.

"I've got you now, wimp!" Robert roared and pounced.

If Ari had moved a nanosecond slower then Robert would have caught him. As it stood, he only just managed to throw himself out of the way, and Robert crashed into the floor where he was a heartbeat ago. He hit the floor as Ari scrambled to a stand, once again banging his head on the door handle of a cylinder.

He was panting, his chest hurt, and his left side had started to stitch up. His head was about to start bleeding from the double collision with the door handle.

The door handle.

 _Bingo_. Ari grinned as Robert picked himself up off of the ground. "Hey, fumblefoot!" Robert's head snapped to the left to look at Ari, who pulled the most obnoxious face he could make. "Loser! Klutz!" Robert's eyes narrowed, and Ari grinned.

He had to admit; it felt good to insult Robert without fear of getting his throat ripped out. Of course, if this idea didn't work, that would happen—but he wouldn't think about that. This would work. Not only that, but it would be awesome. It would be just like the way Max and Iggy did things. Ari grabbed the door handle with his left hand and readied himself, leaning to the right.

When Robert lunged, Ari threw himself to the right. The bigger boy ended up inside the cylinder, thrashing around in the plastic container. Moving as fast as he could, Ari slammed the door shut and threw his back against it. His shoulder hurt and his stomach was flipping over and over, but he felt _great_. This was an awesome idea.

He turned around to look at Robert, who was still flailing his arms and legs. He and Ari were face-to-face. Robert began to bang on the inside of the cylinder, yelling something that Ari couldn't hear over the humming of the tubes.

Wait. What if Robert got out? Ari's stomach dropped and he lunged for the control panel, looking for something that would lock the door. Unfortunately, the "control panel" was full of buttons that he couldn't figure out the meaning of, and screens displaying data that might as well have been gibberish. But on the top, there were three small buttons—one green, one red, and one blue.

Okay. Green meant "good," and that would open the door because whatever had happened inside was good. Red meant "bad," and even though Ari didn't like Robert much, he didn't want to hit the "bad" button, because then—well, bad stuff would happen. And blue—blue seemed like a good bet. Ari hit the blue button. That would lock the door, right?

The door locked with a _click_ and Ari sighed in relief. But when the plastic bubble began to constrict around Robert's struggling form, encasing his body in what looked like a wetsuit with tubes puncturing his skin, Ari froze in shock.

What had he done? He slammed the green button—he didn't like Robert, but he wouldn't be able to deal with having _murdered_ him.

Hitting the green button didn't open the door, like Ari had expected it to. Instead it triggered a reaction inside the tank: the bubbles began to form and move at a faster rate, and some went through the small tubes in the plastic suit into Robert's skin. As Ari watched, Robert went from angry and encased in plastic wrap to unconscious and floating in the tank. His chest moved like he was breathing, but there wasn't any air.

Ari slammed the green button again. "Let him out!" Again. "Let him out!" He tried kicking the cylinder. Again he slammed the green button. He even tried mashing the other buttons, the ones he didn't understand, and the data on the screens went haywire.

And then Robert started to grow. As Ari watched, his body lengthened and enlarged, going from a very, very muscular six-year-old to a lanky, stretched out parody of a six-year old. Once he had been stretched-out to around six feet, his facial structure began to change. The features became more angular, and when the jaw slipped open, a mouth full of vicious-looking teeth was revealed. Throughout this process, the plastic didn't rip or tear. Instead it stretched with Robert, covering him like a wetsuit.

Ari tried to move his legs. He couldn't run away. He was stuck staring up at the container as tubes hummed and liquid glowed, and Robert changed from a bully into something else.

Robert's hands grew. The knuckles became more prominent, the shape boxier. His shoulders broadened. The muscles beneath his skin began to shift and grow, turning from stretched-out to normal, and then to oversized. Hair began to grow on his face, and his jawline hardened. His mouth slipped open, and a complete set of baby teeth tumbled out, floating around his head. New ones grew in their place, as sharp and deadly-looking as what they were replacing. Ari flinched.

 _No… it can't be possible. Is this what she meant by "processing?" Is this what happens every six months? Kids get turned into…_

Robert opened his eyes and stared down at Ari. And then it clicked. The fear holding Ari frozen turned into a burning desire to be out of this room, this building, this state. Ari turned tail and sprinted, heading for the door. He ran down the hallway as fast as his legs could carry him. He couldn't see anything but Robert's face in front of him, shifting and changing.

He took a wrong turn somewhere, and ended up standing alone as the dark halls stretched out in all directions. Surrounded by the silent halls and the awful knowledge of what he had done, he fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands.

 _Don't think about it don't think about it—_

Robert's face, twisted into a rictus of anger and pain—

 _Don't think about it—_

His hands, fingers with nails that could only truly be described as claws—

 _DON'T THINK ABOUT IT DON'T THINK ABOUT IT DON'T—_

Ari whimpered. He hadn't meant to do it. He didn't—

He retched, keeping breakfast down through force of will alone. What had he done? They would lock him up for this. Nobody liked kids running around messing up adult work. Jeb barely tolerated him, how would these guys feel?

They'd eat him alive. Robert would be the first one to go for him.

Even now there were footsteps coming closer. Ari glanced to his left and saw Amy walking like she didn't have a care in the world, tossing something up and down. When her eyes lighted upon him they widened and she ran to him, catching the whatever-it-was out of the air and holding it.

When she reached him, she crouched down to look him in the eye. "What is it?"

"I didn't mean to do it—" Ari said. That was all he managed before his voice broke and he buried his face in his hands. "Robert was in the room. He wanted to kill me. I got him into the tank and I just wanted to leave him there, I swear I did, but I hit the wrong button and—"

His panicked, teary confession was cut short by Amy's hand on his shoulder. "Look," she said. "It was in self-defense. You did the right thing, so don't beat yourself up over it."

"Even if I had k—"

"Even if you had killed him it would have been the right thing to do," Amy said. Her voice didn't tremble at all when she said _killed_. "Self-defense."

Ari didn't say anything. Instead he wrapped his arms around Amy's neck, buried his face in her shoulder, and bit down hard on his lip to stop himself from crying. Slowly, carefully, Amy hugged him back. That just made him want to cry more. He didn't deserve this.

He messed up everything. He annoyed Jeb, bothered the Flock, and now he was a murderer.

Erasers didn't do anything but kill, Max had told him. They ate the experiments that had gone wrong. There was a yard and the scientists would throw kids out, cages and all, and then somebody would drag the cages back in at the end of the day. They would sometimes bring back broken cages because the Erasers had been too hungry to get the cages open right.

And now Robert was an Eraser.

* * *

 _This is, without any exaggeration or hyperbole, one of my favorite chapters. Although I'm sure that most of you saw this coming, it was just so much fun to write. _

_Also! It's super flattering that so many people are leaving reviews. Like seriously I get hearteyes every time I see that number go up and I click and somebody's taken the time to comment on my writing, to offer advice or to give a compliment. When we hit seventy reviews, I'll post something extra I've been working on._


	16. White Hallways

_Thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to everybody who reviewed in-between updates: Birdwatched, drift, AbsolutelyAbby, jrits, and littleauthorgirl._

* * *

"Okay, here's what we're going to do," Amy said, holding Ari still. "We're going to get up, and we're going to walk out, and we're gonna go over to the poor babies in cages, and we're not going to say _anything_ about this ever. Okay?"

Ari nodded. He tried to say something, but his mouth was too dry and his throat had closed up. Finally he forced the word out.

"Okay."

Amy stood and pulled him up. She walked and he followed, barely lifting his feet.

The trek through the halls seemed much longer now. The stink of the containers reached him as he walked away from Processing. Even the hallways of the floor above stank.

"I can hear your teeth chattering." Amy spun to face him and grabbed both his hands in hers, walking backwards through the hallways. She was squeezing too tight, but Ari didn't mind. The pain was the only thing keeping him in the real world.

"Look, I hecked up," she said. Her voice, even though it didn't sound _normal_ , wasn't as dry anymore, and her eyes seemed brighter as she stared at him, like flashlights shining through fog. "I got you in trouble. It's pretty cool what you did, but I should've been there for you, and it's not fair you got pitted up against an Eraser-kid by yourse—"

"Eraser-kid?" Ari repeated. His voice felt like radio static, buzzing around his ears.

"Yeah," Amy said. "An Eraser that's still a kid." She squinted at him. "You didn't know?"

"I didn't—" The only Erasers that he had seen were the ones that had taken him away, and they were fully-grown. But that meant—

The buzzing got louder. Robert had been one, but there were eleven other kids in the dorm. If some whitecoat put those eleven other kids into a tank, then they would—

Max crumpled to the ground.

The helicopter landed, its blades thudding loud enough to drown out the world.

Angel screamed.

The bubbles in the containers rose, bursting in slow-motion when they reached the top.

"—to me, don't—" The buzzing drowned out the voice.

Somebody hit him across the face, and he fell back onto the floor, blinking and gasping for air. He had felt like this once before; Jeb had taken them swimming and Ari, overestimating himself, had stayed for too long at the bottom of the lake.

"You okay?" Amy asked. Her right hand was still balled up into a fist. "I can hit you again if you want."

Ari touched the side of his face. The skin was throbbing, his jaw ached, and he felt like he had been hit upside the head with an encyclopedia. On the bright side, he couldn't feel any broken bones. "I'm good, thanks."

Amy nodded. "You looked like you were having a nightmare, but you were awake. Sometimes if I have nightmares Wendy dumps me on the floor or she hits me and I wake up." She tilted her head and stared at him. "Did I wake you up?"

"Yeah. C'mon." He pulled himself off the floor and started off down the hallway, walking like he knew where he was going. Amy caught up with him, and together they headed through the white linoleum maze.

Nudge and Iggy plummeted out of sight, clinging to each other, while bullets tore through the air around them.

Gazzy dropped—

White hallways. White. White hallways.

Ari blinked once, twice. He was in the School. He was awake. He was walking. Amy was next to him. Silently he reached out and held her hand. She shrugged but didn't pull away, and they continued on. A speaker buzzed into life, calling a Prescott and a Waters to report to Prep, wherever that was.

Ari and Amy walked for about ten minutes before stopping by a white door. There were black numbers printed on it, but once the door opened, Ari couldn't bring himself to look at anything other than the cages.

There were rows of them, stretching from wall to windowless wall, filled with little kids, big kids, and even a few toddlers. The kids were looking helplessly at him with dark-circled eyes. As he stared back, barely able to move, he saw open wounds, hollow cheeks, and protruding bones. One boy even had an eye that had been punctured, and it was oozing pus.

And they were all freaks. One boy had huge, fly-like eyes. Another was covered in hair. There was a girl, Nudge's age, with two sets of spider-legs coming out of her back like wings.

Before he could see any of the others, his body reacted without his conscious approval. He turned and ran to the other side of the room, where he threw up noisily into a garbage can. This room stank of pee and dirt, and the kids were just staring blindly, and _oh God the Flock had been in cages like this_ —

He threw up again, this time less noisily. He curled up against the wall, pulling his now-rubbery legs to his chest. His eyes were stinging, the tears blurring the world around him. Maybe if he stayed here, it would all be a bad dream. Maybe if—

No. This was real.

Ari forced himself to stand up and wiped his mouth with the collar of his shirt. He crossed the room to kneel down outside of one of the cages, mimicking Amy's stance. Even though the inside of his mouth felt sour, he forced himself to look at the girl inside the cage. He had to be strong. Amy would leave him again if he was weak, just like the whitecoats had left her, just like the Flock—

No. The Flock was coming for him. One day Amy's door wouldn't be locked. He could talk to this girl.

"Hey," he said. His throat ached.

The girl inside the cage flinched. She couldn't have been much older than eighteen, but her gaunt face and lank pale hair made her look much older. "What?" Her voice was hoarse and she had an accent that made the word sound like _vhut_.

"Um…"

She shook her head. Even though her cage was fairly large, she was still curled up in on herself. She pushed herself up to a semi-seated position to stare him in the eyes. "Don't bother." Her voice dripped disdain. "We're all going to die."

"I—"

The scarred girl laughed, and it echoed off the walls of the room. A few other mutants were looking at them now. "It's funny, isn't it? I was a prototype. I spent my wholelifebeing the best and then I spent a yearhere teaching a bunch of freaks how to kill me—which they're going to do because I _eat too much_. They spent _ages_ on all of our development, and we're all going to fucking _die_! Isn't that funny?"

Ari flinched away, but she grabbed his shirt with her fingertips and yanked him toward her, so his face was squished up against the bars of her cage. Up close like this, he could see the burst blood vessels in her eyes. The faint red lines were the most colorful part of her eyes—her blue-gray irises were so light they were almost colorless.

With her hands fisted in his shirt, the girl laughed again. "Isn't that goddamn hilarious?" She shoved him back and pulled him in again, slamming his face against the bars of his cage. "Isn't it!"

Before Ari could answer her, Amy yanked him out of the girl's grasp. "Cut it out," she said. "It's not his fault that they want to kill you, so don't hurt him to prove a point."

The girl glared up at her and shook her cage harshly, slamming it up and down. "So I'm about to _die_ and you don't want me to rough your friend up a little? What, are you afraid he'll get a few bruises? Maybe a cuton his face?" She spat on the floor. "You're still a brat."

"Go out with a fight if you want to," Amy said, not letting go of Ari's shirt. "You're good at it. But he's not the one that you need to fight."

Ari tried to pull himself out of Amy's grasp while the girl in the cage swore quietly.

"Oh." Amy let him go. "Sorry."

Ari stared at a spot on the floor. "Can we leave? I mean…" When the words died in his throat, he forced himself to look at Amy before shame dragged his gaze back down. "Can we go back to the dorms I'm kind of—"

Amy swallowed, and glanced at the girl in the cage. When she spoke, her voice wobbled. "Sure."

And they were out in the hallways again, walking across white floors. Ari listened to the tapping of their feet against the linoleum as they walked. "So all those kids in there…"

Amy opened the dorm's door. "They're gonna die. They're not good enough or there's not enough money or whatever, so those kids are going to die or get shipped somewhere else." None of the uncertainty from before remained.

Ari sat down on the nearest bed and pulled his legs up against his chest, making himself as small as possible. His hands were shaking so he balled them into fists, his fingernails digging into the meat of his palms. "And the Erasers eat them," he muttered.

"Yeah."

"And the other kids in here—the other kids in—"

"Turn into Erasers." Amy sat down next to him. Ari looked sideways at her and saw that she was biting down lightly on her lip, her forehead furrowed. He let his legs fall away from his chest.

"And—" he continued, trying to keep from thinking about it. His face still throbbed from getting yanked into the scarred girl's cage.

"And you turned Robert into an Eraser," Amy said. She might have said _and it's going to rain today_. "And he's gonna eat a kid or two, or more probably. There's nothing you or me or anybody else can do about it." She chewed on her lip for a moment before speaking again. "It… she was good. At fighting. It… It stinks that she has to die."

Ari took in a deep shuddering breath. Everything was a mess. This was the School, this was the place that had given the Flock nightmares and turned Fang into a tightly-wound ball of nerves and it was the reason that Amy was so closed-off, and it made Erasers, _Ari_ had made an Eraser and even if it was self-defense he was a murderer, because kids were going to _die_. And the worst part was that it made sense. Last night he had been confused, and lost, and wondering where the cages were. He'd trade anything to go back to then. He'd—

The door opened and Wendy walked in. "Oh, Amy, there you are. I was looking for you." She smoothed her hair back. "You should go find Peter and stay with him—somebody's talking about a breach on Processing and they want to know where we all are. Peter won't mind saying that you were with him the whole time."

Amy winced but stood anyway. Ari began to push himself off the bed, but Wendy shook her head. "I heard that they don't want him in the cage rooms. I'll stay here with him."

Amy turned back to Ari and stared at him for a long second, forehead furrowed in concentration.

"You'll be okay." She handled the words like Iggy would handle eggs. Both her voice and her gaze had rock-solid certainty in them, and Ari felt his arm shift as he reached out to her.

But she spun on her heel and left, and the door slammed shut behind her.

Once she was gone, Wendy crossed the room and sat on the floor. "Go rinse out your mouth," she said, not looking at Ari. "Nobody wants to smell your puke breath."

Ari flinched and complied. Once done, he hesitated before sitting down on the floor next to Wendy.

"You know," she said, examining her nails, "I don't like you. You're stupid and weak, and the only reason Amy is friendly with you is because you do the same dumb stuff as her. I don't trust you. You're like a complete stranger and you think that you can just come in here. And I know it's your fault, what happened down in Processing. You heard that squad that they called? They're going to go down there, and they're going to find your fingerprints all over that mess, and they're going to find you," Wendy looked at Ari and smiled, "and they're going to make you pay."

 _No_. No, it wasn't, this wasn't happening, it was self-defense… Amy had said so, he didn't mean it…

"Y-you're lying," Ari said, even though she wasn't. His hands started to shake again, but he balled them into fists. "You're lying, you're lying. It wa-wasn't my fault, it wasn't—"

Wendy laughed. "It was and you know it." She tilted her head back, still smiling. "Don't you?"

Tears welled up in Ari's eyes and he blinked them away. In his second of hesitation, Wendy looked just like Angel. There was that same innocent smile, a sure way out of any situation that had turned nasty. But Angel wouldn't say things like that. Angel wouldn't— None of the Flock would—

Wendy was talking.

"—you're just a burden," she said. "To everybody."

What did _she_ know about that? About anything?

"Shut up, you freak!" Ari shouted. His nails bit into his palms, stinging, beginning to break the skin. "Shut up, you stupid freak!"

"Why, what are you going to do?" Wendy's smile grew toothy. "Sic Amy on me? Or are you going to turn meinto an Eraser? You know, I really didn't expect _that_ to happen when I told Robert where to find you—but I guess it's for the best. Now you're in even _more_ trouble—"

Tanks glowing softly.

Bubbles rising.

A sound he could only half-remember: teeth ripping into flesh, metal clanging.

The salty stink of blood, thick and metallic.

Angel dropping like a stone from the helicopter, plummeting out of sight.

Blink.

Black.

Blink.

White.

He was standing, holding something up against a wall. Something heavy. Something…

warm. Moving.

Something alive.

His hand around Wendy's throat. Her face red and her lip split. Her eyes wide with some indiscernible emotion and her mouth moving, speaking words that he couldn't hear.

 _What?_

 _No, I don't…_

 _No!_

Everything was miles away, and his fingers were iron around her throat. Somebody was shouting.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him away from Wendy. Ari struggled to break free, but there was a stabbing pain in his neck and his arms and legs were no longer moving as they should. The world became blurry, gray, black. He heard what could have been sobs or laughter as he fell into unconsciousness.

* * *

 _Next chapter is on Saturday, guys. Don't forget to leave a review!_ :)


	17. Changing Faces (Remix)

_Much thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to everybody who reviewed between updates: AbsolutelyAbby and littleauthorgirl._

* * *

Reilly grinned as he wheeled the cart containing the unconscious boy to Processing. It wasn't weird that he thought experimenting on a seven-year-old was cool, right? Right.

Besides, he had used every available minute to make sure that this time, nothing would go wrong.

Nothing.

No screw-ups, no deaths in the container, no cancerous growths. Everything would be _fine_ , and they would reach a new stage in genetic engineering.

"Jodie!" he said. "I need you to get a stem cell sample from this kid so we can start restructuring stuff." His grin widened.

Restructuring was _great_. It wasn't his favorite part, but it still rocked. And although he wouldn't be doing it, he still got to watch the team down in Processing-Structuring work on it. Everybody from Processing was great, they could go from zero to sixty at a moment's notice, work hard for a few hours, and then go out and party when they had finished the job.

"I'm sure they're all druggies," Mara had said once, when Reilly had staggered back home at three in the morning.

But Mara smoked, so Reilly figured that she didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to judging. Bottom line, Processing was the shit.

See, when they mapped the human genome, science decided that it wasn't _enough_ to know about the human genome, they had to know all there was to know about every single animal. The AGP was still a work in progress, but they made progress every day. Learning about something meant nothing if you weren't able to _use_ your knowledge for awesome things. So the process of DNA editing was refined, and the molecular snipping techniques were made better. The microscopes got more precise, and then they got smaller. And now, with the new nanotechnology, it was possible for lateral DNA transfers to be done from a computer.

Even introducing the altered DNA into every cell in the body wasn't as difficult, thanks to thousands of virologists around the world. The process of initiating mutation was much more risky, however, and that's why the tanks had to be employed. They bombarded the experiment with HGH and nutrients, speeding up the growth process so it would be immediately known if the experiment was a success or a failure.

Reilly sighed. Sometimes even just _thinking_ about all the cool stuff they could do was enough to get him to start ranting. According to Mara, this behavior carried over into drunkenness.

Years ago, his younger brother Maxwell had developed leukemia. Deadly, fast, and painful, it resisted even the most intense chemotherapy. At the time, Reilly had been twelve and graduating high school, too caught up with his homework to worry about much. His brother's illness flowed around him like a river flowed around a rock, and his death was the last bit of force that dislodged the rock from the riverbed. Reilly drifted through college, barely keeping his grades high enough to keep his scholarships, and forgetting to eat two days a week, if not more. Graduating had given him more purpose, more focus. More importantly, grad school had introduced him to the people he needed to talk to in order to get a job with Itex. It met his qualifications, which wasn't easy to do. It paid enough _and_ kept him from turning to cocaine out of boredom.

He had to do some sketchy shit, like operate on unsuspecting innocent seven-year-olds, but this was better than the alternative. He knew that. Everybody working here knew that. Reilly swallowed the bile rising up into his mouth. _It'll work fine_ , he repeated.

It would. Processing had done great with the stem cells that they had been working with for the past few months. Somatic ones, too, not embryonic, so it's not like they were going in blind here. They would know how to deal with something that wasn't a smidge of genetic material in a test tube. And the growth hormones wouldn't kill the kid, like it did with the old dude—this kid was seven, he was due for massive amounts of HGH soon anyway. Granted, it wouldn't have been administered in under a twenty-four hour period, but he would be fine.

"You guys are _sure_ that the bone-density stuff won't wack up, right? I don't want lil' dude over here to break his legs trying to walk." That's what had happened in the latest experiment, with the bodybuilder who should have been in the prime of health. His shinbones had shattered and ripped through the skin. One of the newbs threw up all over the floor when she saw it.

One of the guys from Processing-Development adjusted his glasses. He was a short, skinny guy who walked with a cane, about Reilly's age if not a few years older—but definitely not over thirty. That wasn't unusual. Itex tended to attract child geniuses.

"We've added more calcium to the development tank solution. And we reduced the acidity, because he obviously doesn't have the right compounds in his iris for degradation," he said. "I don't know why they're insisting on working with both avian and mammalian DNA and bone structure, and, like, everything, Jesus God, but it's not going to go to shit."

The team reached the Pro-Stru room.

Even though gene structures weren't his thing, Reilly had to admit that Processing-Structuring was pretty goddamn impressive. Set out on each table was two computer monitors and two molecular scissoring machines. There was a virus generator over by the sedation table. For a section of the building that barely got used, it sure got a decent amount of the Itex paycheck.

If he were honest with himself, Reilly would admit to the thought that the entire room looked rather bleak and intimidating. He would rather be in Surg, where at least you got to interact with a body. Modifications were more gratifying when you could do them yourself. But when Dr. Howard said _jump_ , you jumped.

And jump they did. They spent the better part of the day in the Pro-Stru room. First they had to extract the stem cells. It wasn't a big deal, but it was a pain in the ass, especially when _somebody_ had forgotten to bring the _lup_ sample.

Well—the right _lup_ sample. They had brought _nubilus_ ; the kid was going to be _chanco_.

Did they want to create a giant flying wolf monster or something? What idiot would try to grow wings on something designed to be big and bulky? It would be like a flying refrigerator. And grafting huge wolf DNA onto a scrawny kid like this was a recipe for disaster. Jesus, did they _want_ the kid to self-destruct before his eighth birthday?

As a reward for his foresight and logical thinking, he was the one who had to run across the building and down to the fourth basement floor to go get the right sample.

This was what he got for putting together a team on less than a day's notice. Fucking idiots.

By the time he had gotten the sample and made it back upstairs, panting, they were bombarding the stem cells' nuclei with helicase, and Marty Cathers, the Pro-Stru guy, was being an asshole.

"Oh, yeah, baby," he mock-moaned as he gazed at the monitor, watching DNA unwind in real time, " _unravel_ that structure."

Reilly rolled his eyes as he put the _lup_ sample down by Cathers' shoulder and backed off to stand by the door. Marty Cathers had a personality switch that was stuck on "jackass," and it wasn't even a _fun_ kind of jackass unless you both were drunk.

Sal Jordan hit him on the shoulder. "Quit being an asshole, you asshole. Kid's _seven_. That's gay _and_ pedophilic."

"Better stop, then," Cathers said, smirking. "Wouldn't want to be gay. Hey, if I say _no homo_ , can I tell this to work like it's my bitch?"

"No," the Pro-Dev guy said. "Saying _no homo_ just makes it gayer, because you're recognizing the gay and that you are, in fact, gay, you're really gay, and Jesus H Christ I haven't slept since Friday. I'm getting coffee."

He turned and headed out, and when he passed Reilly he said, "And you're coming, too. They won't need you for another hour or two, and then it'll be an all-night thing. Supervising and stuff. Better stock up now."

Although Reilly was stocked up—he had gotten a solid six hours of sleep over the past twenty-four hours and about four cups of coffee this morning—he knew an out when he saw one, and he took it with as much grace as possible. The two of them walked down the hallway in synch, hands in the pockets of their lab coats. When they were far enough from the Pro-Stru room that Cathers' voice was inaudible, the Pro-Dev guy spoke.

"So, what's Itex up to with this? We've been doing double recombs with ac-dev for a few months, but only _in utero_. I've barely _heard_ about, about fuckin'," he waved his free hand wildly before continuing. "Fuckin' virus shit. I mean, it's not my division, but still. Why the sudden push?"

Reilly shrugged. "Dr. Howard said, _Reilly, do the thing_ , so here I am, doing the thing. I've been working on post-natal double-recombs for a while, and he gave me the kid to work on when my supply of volunteers ran out."

Pro-Dev guy blinked. "Wait. Dr. _Howard_ told you to experiment on Dr. _Batchelder's_ kid." He was silent for a few moments. "The hell? The hell is up with this shit?" He shook his head. "This is, like, a soap opera. Why is he doing this? …Never mind, I don't get paid enough to ask questions like that."

Neither of them spoke further. They reached the break room, drank through a pot of coffee and made some more for later, threw their cups out and headed back for the lab.

When they got back Cathers had a bright red slap mark on his face and Jordan was manning the microscope. Reilly had gone drinking with Jordan a few times, and liked her. She was pretty mellow, but still up for a good joke. Mara liked Jordan too, which spoke to both the scientist's personality and tolerance for cheap lager.

"Hey," Jordan said, not looking at them. "You two were gone for long enough. We're a bit into _ave_ , still bones though, we did _lup_. In about…"

Cathers picked up for her. "… An hour or three we'll be done with _ave_ , and then you losers," he gestured around the room. Almost everybody was on their phones, texting those in another department or friends outside—it was early yet. "Can actually do some work, ay?"

"Yah, yah," Anna Stevenson said. "Like I haven't already been keeping the kid on sed?" She snorted. "Actually do some work? Kiss my ass, Cathers."

"You have an ass?"

Reilly rolled his eyes and pulled out his phone. This bickering could go on for hours. In fact it might, because a team, once made, had to stick together. He wanted to tune them out, to chat with Mara, but his fingers were shaking too much to text. "Can you guys _cut it out_?" he found himself snapping at Cathers and Stevenson.

"That's what _I'm_ doing," Jordan said, and smirked.

"Hey, baby, I know what you can cut out," Cathers said. He even wiggled his hips.

Reilly wanted to throttle him, and ignored the fact that just last week he had been laughing at Cathers' bad jokes and texting videos of Cathers dancing to Mara with the caption _See, this is why you go into life sciences_.

He settled for trying to visualize the results of the _successful_ processing. He tried to see, in his mind's eye, the kid in the tank. The other kids in their tanks. Everything working, everything going smoothly, a step in reparative treatment being made, no mistakes, no screw-ups, no mistakes, no mistakes… it was going to be fantastic, a great breakthrough, no mistakes, no mistakes…

Jordan had finished the DNA by three in the afternoon. It took two more hours for the virus to be built, and then about thirty minutes for Stevenson to inject it into the kid. Once that happened, it was a race against time—get the kid in the tank, get the kid in the tank, get the kid in the tank so the results can be seen. They got the kid in the tank in about a minute, thanks to PDB's proximity to the Pro-Stru room.

As Reilly watched the opaque plastic of the inner container close around the kid's sleeping body, a question rose, unbidden, in his mind. "Hey, does anybody know his name? I mean," he gestured around the room, which was likewise full of tanks containing sleeping kids, "We know their names. We gave them their names. I mean, the _ave_ kids didn't know that they were going in here to be aged up, but the _lup_ ones did. So it's different. But this kid… does anybody know who he is?"

"He's Batchelder's kid," Jordan said. "Other than that, no."

"Who cares what his name is?" Stevenson said. "You can look it up later, if you want. Howard'll have files."

"Like what Stevenson said. It's not the name that matters, it's the procedure, if you know what I mean." Cathers slung an arm over Jordan's shoulder. She shrugged it off, scowling.

They stared up at the tank. The kid was floating, breathing in the liquid and breathing it out again.

"I heard, um, I heard that he put a kid in one of those," said the Indian beanpole in the back. Reilly was pretty sure he was one of the programming geeks—he had requested one or two, after all. Cut-and-pasting genomes was all well and good, but sometimes you had to run a simulation to make sure that you had done the _right_ ones.

Jordan turned around, arching an eyebrow. "Oh yeah?"

"Earlier today, yeah."

"Who told you?"

"I have a friend who was checking the chat notifs, earlier today, um, he said that there was a _lup_ in there. Full-grown. Said, um, the tank registered multiple T-serum injects. And, um, the kid was unreg, so."

Jordan scowled. "Goddamn it," she said. "That means more paperwork."

"You shouldn't have to do anything for it," the soft-spoken girl from Obs chimed in. "You're on the structuring side of things, right?"

"Still, it happened in the lab where I work. If somebody's been sneaking in, it means that security's compromised. Means that I have to inventory every single _fucking_ one of the petri dishes, all over again. I can't trip over a tube without needing to fill out another form, and this kid _locks a lup in a fucking tank and slams the green button_. What kind of a fool… and how did he get in; through the ventilation ducts?" Her face twisted. Somehow, she still looked good. It was an angry kind of good. "Fuck it."

Cathers inched about a meter away before speaking. "You know, your accent comes out when you're angry. It's kind of hot."

Jordan spun as if to punch him, but realizing that he was out of reach, flipped him off. Her mouth twisted against a laugh. "Fuck you, mon."

"Can you guys… stop it?" The liquid in the tank might as well have been in Reilly's lungs, because it took so much effort to form each individual word. When he spoke it was as if they, once formed, floated through the air and passed by his colleagues.

The Pro-Dev guy was over by the control panel, his hands moving fast as he brought up screens full of wavering bars, only to close them after a moment of intense staring.

Reilly blinked several times as he looked around the room. It didn't feel like five in the evening. It felt late, or early, or no time at all. The stink of the liquid was almost overwhelming.

Cathers slapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, _mon_ , don't worry. This is going to work, and it's going to be _awesome_. And chicks dig awesome shit. You'll be like, swimming in pussy. And dick. And, like, other shit too. Tentacles, probably."

Reilly forced a laugh that turned genuine once it was halfway done. "Keep your tentacle dick away from me, man." The laughter continued, unbidden, and turned to wheezing. When Reilly managed to breathe normally, his face was flushed and Jordan was looking at him with one eyebrow arched. He waved her off.

It would work, he told himself. No mistakes, it would work…

It was going to be awesome.

* * *

 _Hopefully this chapter clears up some misconceptions about Erasers and Eraser-kids. If not, let me know, I'll go back and edit._

 _And to be honest, most of the "point" this chapter is just, like, "here is how the science works." I suppose I could take it out and there wouldn't be a problem, plot-wise. What do you guys think?_


	18. You're Not Jeb

_Thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to everyone who's reviewed in-between updates: drift, drift again, and AbsolutelyAbbie._

* * *

Getting punched in the stomach hard enough means that you stop breathing for a split second. You suck in air, but your lungs aren't expanding, and nothing seems to work right. It's a horrible feeling, because your thoughts speed up too. So that moment, no matter how short it is, feels like forever, and you start to wonder what living without breathing would be like.

That was how I felt when Iggy said _Jeb is dead_.

I let myself feel this way for a good five seconds, and then I pulled myself together. Block out the pain and you block out the weakness. That's how you're supposed to fight. That's what stops you from falling to the ground after the first minute. Just block out the pain long enough to get through the fight, and you win. I'd have to be even stronger now. But I could do that.

"Nudge, Gasman, Angel," I said. "You go into Ella's room. It's the one with the blue door. Fang and Iggy, stay here. We need to talk about what we're going to do."

"What!? But, Max—" Nudge started. Fang clapped his hand over her mouth, making her narrow her eyes at him.

"Nudge was good enough to come along with you when you split us up," Iggy said. "She's good enough to stick with us and talk."

"Iggy, I appreciate your input. But you seem to be under the impression that this right here is a democracy." I leveled a stare at him. "It's not. It's a Maxocracy. And we are, with Dr. M's permission, going to stick the kids in with Ella while we figure out what the hell we're going to do." I turned to Dr. M. "Is it okay if we, um."

"It's fine if you guys stay here," Dr. M said, her eyes wide. "In fact, you can stay as long as you want! Help yourselves to cookies and coffee, there's milk in the fridge. Are you hungry? Should I make you real food? I can make food." Her hands were shaking as she brushed her hair back behind her ear.

"No thanks," Iggy said, and Fang shook his head.

"Alright then. Kids, go meet Ella. She's nice. Fang, Iggy, outside." I turned to Dr. M. "No offense, but this is a family thing—I'll explain later." After the kids had filed past me, I put one hand on Fang's chest and one on Iggy's, pushing them out of the doorway. Dr. M closed the door behind me.

"First off. I could have been in some freaky mad science basement isolation chamber, so thanks for coming to my rescue." I glared at Fang. " _Not_. You're an idiot for getting the kids in danger! Isn't it bad enough that Ari's captured? You want to throw Gazzy and Angel under the bus too? Is that what you call thinking?"

"It was Iggy's idea," Fang said.

"You left us behind and Erasers swarmed us," Iggy snapped. "Excuse me for not wanting to have that happen to anybody else."

"Fine," I snapped back. Keep moving, keep thinking, don't let the pain win. "Exactly what happened back at the E-shaped-house? Why are you here?"

When Iggy spoke, his voice was as dry as he could make it. "Erasers stormed the E-shaped house, we went to the cabin, more Erasers showed up there, and then Jeb blew it up while we flew away."

I nodded and swallowed the lump in my throat. No time for tears. No time for crying. I could do that later. "All right," I said. "Let's figure out what we're going to do."

Before Fang could open his mouth, Iggy blurted out, "Even after we left the E-shaped house we had Erasers following us."

"Wait, really?" Jesus, what if there were Erasers trailing us now, lying in wait and ready to grab us and drag us back to the School? The guy in the suit from earlier hadn't shown up—was it just some freaky coincidence, some wayward weightlifting businessman who couldn't figure out his phone, or was he an Eraser too, setting up a homing device so he'd always know where we were?

Iggy nodded. "Gasman blew them up, but… well. They were fucking _endless_ back at the School. They're probably following us, trying to drag us back into the School so they can…"

 _Experiment on us and kill us_.

"Okay, so then we leave. Now. We get away from Dr. M and Ella. Far, far away. We have maps and some food." I nodded to myself as I said this. As far as my plans went, this was pretty good.

Fang shook his head. "Your wing is still injured. We need a day or two before it heals."

"I know that, genius," I snarled, yanking his face down by the collar of his shirt so we could see eye-to-eye. It wasn't far—he just two inches taller than me—but I would be damned if I stood on my toes to look him in the eyes. "But my little brother is in a mad science laboratory, and Erasers are going to hurt two perfectly innocent people. I don't give a damn if I'm injured."

Oddly enough, Fang didn't pull out of the stranglehold I had him in. He just stayed there, leaning down slightly, and then he nodded once.

"Right," I said, conscious of how close our faces were. "Now we get the kids and we get in the air." I unfurled my wings a little, ignoring the throbbing sensation where the bullet had nicked it. Flying half-lame would be a bitch, and I ran the risk of delaying healing. The pills that Dr. M had given me earlier had dulled the pain somewhat, but not entirely.

 _Pain is a message_. _Ignore it_. Jeb's voice, speaking from out of my memories, helped me grimace and set my jaw.

"Max," Iggy said, "we're not taking off when you're beat up like that. You'll end up getting some kind of infection. Remember when we were twelve, and—"

I released Fang's collar and turned on Iggy, stabbing my finger in his chest. "What do you want me to do, then? Let Erasers come here? Let them catch us? Let them catch Ella and Dr. M? I stopped to helpa girl, not to get her killed!"

He stepped back, eyes wide, and held up his hands. "I'm not saying that we shouldn't leave," he said slowly. "I'm saying that we shouldn't _fly_. There are alternative modes of transportation, you know."

"We're no—"

I put my hand over Fang's mouth before he could finish whatever he was going to say. "Iggy," I said, cogs turning in my birdkid brain, "are you suggesting that we steal a car?"

"Yup!" He held up a hand, and I high-fived him.

We could go into business: Max and Iggy, creative problem solvers. Stealing cars might be slightly illegal, but hey—so was kidnapping. And mad science experimentation. And murder. So by doing something that was _kind of_ illegal, we were stopping whitecoats from doing the _really_ bad stuff.

Somebody should give us a Nobel Prize for stealing cars, is what I'm saying.

I forced myself to grin. "This is going to be awesome." Maybe if I said it, it would come true. Even if it didn't, I had to put up a good face for the kids.

"Mmmff mmmf mm mmmf mmmff," Fang said.

Wow, his lips were soft. How come my lips got chapped but his didn't? Some people had all the luck.

I removed my hand.

"We're going to get pulled over," he said. "None of us can drive."

"I can learn," I said. "No biggie. Iggy, go get the kids. I'll say our goodbyes to Dr. M."

When I walked into the kitchen, Angel and Gasman were already there. Apparently they had decided to ignore the Edict Of Max. Angel was talking quietly with Dr. M while Gazzy was sipping a cup of coffee.

"That's black, right?" I asked him. Normally I'd tell him that he was too young for caffeine, but the dark circles under his eyes told me that maybe, just maybe, now wasn't the time for that. How long had he been in the air, anyway? Angel's top speed wasn't anywhere _near_ ninety, so they might have been flying for two to three times as long as I had been.

He nodded and tilted the cup toward me. "See?"

"Good job." I ruffled his hair. "Sorry, but the cookies are a no-go."

Poor kid had a _huge_ amount of digestive issues. Milk, cheese, four kinds of nuts, and about three different kinds of meat were off the menu completely. And if he did eat them, well—he's called _the Gasman_ for a reason.

"I know," he said.

As I headed for where Dr. M was sitting on her haunches, listening to Angel talk, I picked up one of the cookies for myself. Although I tried to be discreet about it, I could hear Gazzy sigh.

Leaning against the wall, I shoved the cookie into my mouth and chewed, waiting for Angel to stop talking.

"—and then he said _it's okay Angel, Max will get you_ , and Max flew up and she pulled me out of the tree and she flew me back down. And she got Mrs. Bear too, but Mrs. Bear's dress ripped, but—"

" _Fang and Nudge made her a new one_." The two of us finished the sentence together.

Dr. M laughed. "You must have heard this story a lot," she said, standing up to face me.

"At least four times," I told her. "If we were back home then she would show you the bear, too." Thinking about _home_ made my stomach twist. "I think, um, I think we had better leave. Thanks for fixing up my wing."

"Thank _you_ for saving my daughter," she said, and pulled me into a hug.

I just about jumped out of my skin, but relaxed after a moment. She was warm, and the sweater she was wearing felt like a blanket. To top it off, she smelled like fresh-baked chocolate-chip cookies. I closed my eyes, and, for one happy moment, nothing else mattered.

And that felt kind of crappy. Jeb was practically my dad, and he had just died, and now I was fine with this strange woman hugging me?

 _Jeb wouldn't want you to feel like crap_ , my subconscious told me, shoving my pity train off the rails.

"I'm afraid you'll have to drag Nudge out of here by her hair," she kidded when she let me go. "She and Ella are chattering about God-knows-what and they haven't even left the room to get cookies."

Nudge turning down food? Apparently Ella was a better conversationalist than I thought.

"Hey, you two," I called as I stood outside of Ella's door. I could hear Nudge talking away. "We're leaving now."

When neither of them responded, I sighed and opened the door. The two of them were sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing each other.

"—and ohmigod, don't even get me _started_ on the composition notebooks. I swear, all of my notebooks have so many pages torn out because _somebody_ wanted to use them for plans, or draw on them, or turn them into paper airplanes, and it's like, what, do you guys not want me to journal? Because like everybody says that I should keep a journal, I don't know why though, and then they go ahead and steal the stuff that makes up my journals. Why would somebody do that?" Nudge snorted and pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear. Her eyes were still bloodshot still and now there were serious bags under them, but she didn't sound like she was about to break down again. There was something written on her right forearm, and a plastic-bead bracelet around her left wrist.

Ella laughed. "There was this kid in my class, we called him IRS because all he did was take other peoples' stuff. He'd walk up to us in the beginning of the day like, _hey, you look cute, can I borrow a pen_? And if you gave him a pen he'd compliment you some more."

"Now, see, if I got that then I wouldn't _mind_ having people take my stuff. But I'm surrounded by _heathens_." Nudge tossed her hair. "Besides, I already know I'm cute."

"You are cute!"

"What," Nudge said, and tilted her head to the side, "do you want some paper?"

The two of them started giggling, and I took that as my sign to rain on their parades. I cleared my throat. "C'mon, Nudgester, we have to go."

Nudge looked up at me, and I would have sworn that she aged ten years in a half-second. Her face went from "Christmas tree" to "overcast sky", and her shoulders slumped.

She nodded, uncrossed her legs and stood up, and walked past me. "I'll see you soon!" she called over her shoulder.

"You'll _write_ me soon, you mean!" Ella responded, still grinning. She stood too.

Nudge was at the front door, and I was ready to follow her, but Ella's hand on my wrist stopped me. When I looked back she bit her lip, her forehead screwed up in concentration. Finally she let out a breath.

"What's it like?" she asked. "Flying."

I didn't have to hesitate. "It's the best thing in the world," I said, and when her eyes went wide I kept going. "When I'm up in the sky, the air is so thin and clear, and looking down I can see for miles. The wind keeps me up, and I feel—strong. And free. It's not like anything else."

She nodded solemnly and let go of my wrist. "Thanks. And thanks for saving my butt."

"No problem," I said.

As I headed back to the door, Dr. M called my name. "Here," she said, and handed me a small orange pill bottle. "Painkillers and coagulants. Take one every six hours." And then an armful of cloth. "T-shirt, slits included, and a hoodie."

"Th-thank you," I said, pulling on the clothes and shoving the pills into my jeans pocket.

She smiled at me. "No problem. And come back if you can. My house is your house."

I smiled. "Thanks."

The six of us left, walking out into the late afternoon. It was hot, but not unpleasantly so, and the air was still. Far off in the distance I could hear kids yelling and laughing.

"So we're not stealing the car from _here_ ," Fang said. "We're walking to the next town over."

"How far is that?" I asked.

"Five miles."

"Okay."

Nobody spoke until we were about a mile out of town. To my surprise, the first to speak was Angel, not Nudge.

"I like her," Angel said. "Dr. M."

"She is nice," I agreed, not sure where this was going.

Angel held my hand and leaned her head against my arm. "She's like a mom, you know?"

"She _is_ a mom," Nudge pointed out. "She's Ella's mom."

Angel shook her head. "No, like… like the moms on TV. J-Jeb always said that TV wasn't real, but Dr. M was like a TV mom. But real. She was so nice. Can we go visit her sometime?"

"Probably not, sweetie," I said. "I don't want to get her and Ella in trouble with the School."

"Oh… why don't we just get rid of the School, then?"

I froze. How do you explain the concept of _death_ to a six-year-old? How do you explain _power_? How do you ruin a kid's life by making them realize that there's an entire institution that wants them dead or worse? And how do you do that on a summer evening when the air feels like water in your lungs and her words are echoing in your head again and again?

A car drove past us. Dull red, yellow license plate. The driver ignored us, but I kept my eyes on him as he headed down the road. He was a fat, balding guy, and if I had to guess his age I would put it in the forties or fifties. Probably not an Eraser. But after the spine-chilling moment this morning with the man in the suit, it didn't really matter.

 _Please don't pull over, please don't pull over, I don't know what to say if you pull over, I don't know what to do if you pull over, please don't pull over, if you pull over I swear to God I will bash your middle-aged skull in I will bash it right the hell in…_

He didn't pull over. He didn't slow down. He didn't look our way.

Iggy answered for me as I tracked the car. "Because that would be like you trying to smash every ant in the world, Ange."

She nodded once but didn't say anything. Her grip on my hand tightened, and she buried her face in the fabric of my sleeve as we walked, the car now gone from our sights.

We spent the rest of the walk in silence, and it started to sink in. Jeb wouldn't be around to answer those questions anymore. I was the oldest Flock member, and the most mature besides—I couldn't leave any flack for Fang and Iggy to pick up. I couldn't show any weakness. Now more than ever, I couldn't ever lose. I couldn't even tie. I had to win, and keep winning, no matter what.

Once we hit the next town, we started scouting for cars. It took a while, because almost every street had people walking on it, or stores that were open, or restaurants with cop cars in the parking lot. Jesus, what a nightmare. My stomach was flip-flopping like nobody's business, and I had to shove my hands deep into my jeans' pockets to stop myself from flat-out decking the every person I saw.

Eventually we found a car—a blue minivan, about six years old. It was on a little sidestreet, and the only store nearby had its windows boarded up—promising news for potential car thieves.

"Alright, pile in," I said, and Gasman frowned.

"It looks like a piece of garbage," he said. "Can't we try to find something tougher? Like a Jeep? Jeeps are cool. Jeeps are tough. You could hit an Eraser with a Jeep and keep going."

I tried and failed to not roll my eyes. "No, Gazzy, we're not trying to find a Jeep. This is Arizona. People are poor or, um," I fished for another way to describe people from Arizona before deciding to make something up, "coyotes. Giant killer coyotes. Do you want to steal a Jeep from a coyote? No, you don't, because it'll bite your head off."

He nodded, apparently satisfied with that answer. Well, when you grow up seeing wolf-human hybrids, I guess that people from Arizona being actual coyotes isn't that surprising. "I still can't get in, though. I gotta help Iggy hotwire it."

Oh, Jesus. The pyro and an eight-year-old were going to hotwire a car. I swallowed as I realized what a colossally bad decision I had made before I hustled over to the front so I could keep an eye on them. I'd be watching them like a hawk.

And just as we were about to get on with the illegal activity, I heard footsteps down the road. Oh God. Oh no. " _Don't_ _move_ ," I hissed. "Act natural."

Everybody froze, and I swear even the metal of the car grew tighter underneath my fingertips. The footsteps grew closer, closer, closer… and then they faded.

Fang shrugged.

I tried to remember how to breathe normally. "Whatever. Over and done with." I clenched my hands into fists, unclenched them.

Iggy was sitting shotgun while Gazzy sat behind the driver's wheel, a situation that I recognized had high potential to go horribly, awfully wrong.

"Don't do anything stupid, guys," I warned them. "Remember, this thing has to get us to California."

"We're not going to do anything stupid," Iggy snapped. "What, do you think I value a re-enactment of Grand Theft Auto over my little brother's safety?" He rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to Gazzy. "Now, if this were like, the eighties, we'd be able to get away with hot-wiring the steering column."

"Like what we did that time in Bou—" Gazzy's question was cut off by Iggy slapping a hand over his mouth.

"We did _nothing_ in Boulder," Iggy hissed.

"Wait, Boulder? Like when Jeb took us to that museum for your birthday? And we split up and you and Gazzy and Ari didn't show up _anywhere_ for like hours? Ohmigod, you stole a _car_? What if you got caught? What if the cops saw that you had wings, Iggy, that was really stupid! And why didn't you invite me? I would have helped. Did you not think that I could have helped? I totally could have hel-"

"Can it, Nudge," Fang and I said in unison, and I continued on my own. "Your brothers need to focus, and I don't want the cops to find us _here_ as opposed to whatever happened over a year ago."

"No, but really, what if they got caught? What would we have done?" She had half-stood and was trying to look me in the eyes.

My stomach twisted. What _would_ thirteen-and-a-half-year-old me have done? Launched a rescue mission for one-third of my Flock? Gone up against the police force? Jesus. The School was bad enough, but I didn't want to think about what would have happened if I had to fight it out with Uncle Sam. " _Can it, Nudge_ ," I repeated. No way was I going to let her know that I barely knew what I was doing now.

She huffed out a breath and plopped back into her seat in the middle.

By now, Gazzy was drilling into the base of the steering wheel, about an inch above the keyhole. Iggy was fiddling with a screwdriver and rummaging through his backpack, and Fang was watching from over Iggy's shoulder.

"Where did you guys get a—you know what, never mind."

"Home Depot," Gazzy said. "Remember Jeb had to repair the roof?" He turned the drill off and handed it back to Iggy, who passed him the screwdriver.

"That should do it," Iggy said. "Now put the screwdriver in like a key, and we should be good."

Gazzy inserted the screwdriver and twisted it, and the engine turned over. Fang and I whistled, and I nodded. "Pretty good," I said. "Now, Iggy, you're in the middle, Gazzy and Angel are in the back. Fang's giving me directions, so I need him riding shotgun."

Iggy pulled a face. "I help you hotwire a car, and I don't get to ride shotgun? Rude."

"Learn to read a map and you'll have a better chance," Fang said.

Iggy punched him on the shoulder as he stood up and headed for the backseat door. "Asshole."

I narrowed my eyes at him. " _Iggy_! Not in front of the kids."

"Yeah, yeah, sorry," he muttered.

The engine was running when I sat down, and I gripped the wheel hard enough to turn my knuckles white. Driving couldn't be too hard. Big pedal stop, small pedal go, right? Jeb had done it a few times, and he hadn't had a problem with it. So we'd be fine.

 _You're not Jeb, though_.

 _Shut up, brain._ If I wanted to be able to hold the Flock together, I had to be Jeb. I had to be better than Jeb. There wasn't any time for this self-doubt bullcrap.

I pressed on the gas and we moved forward. Like, inched. We moved an inch forward. Great. Okay. So maybe a little more force was needed. I pushed my foot down more firmly, steered us away from the curb, and headed off down the road. There, that wasn't that bad.

"You're supposed to be going the other way," Fang told me.

I flushed. "Shut up, this is part of the plan. I, um—I, I have to learn how to drive this thing. I don't want to do that on the highway."

"So we _are_ going to re-enact Grand Theft Auto," Iggy said. "Excellent. Fang, you can be a prostitute. Nudge, you're my buddy-cop. Gazzy and Angel, you guys are the bags of drugs in the backseat."

"Shut up, Iggy," I snapped. "I need to focus."

There was a corner coming up, and I decided to try to turn. I had made it this far without crashing, so a turn wouldn't be too hard, right? I spun the wheel and accelerated, throwing us all to the right as we turned left. Fang's head hit the glass window with a _thud_ , Nudge and Angel shrieked, and Iggy swore. I grit my teeth as I hung onto the steering wheel. "Just getting the hang of this thing, guys."

Nobody said anything, and I continued down the street. If we kept going like this, I'd have us on the highway in no—

"Stop sign," Fang said.

Reflexively I slammed on the brakes, and we all ricocheted forward, Fang hitting his head on the dash. I winced. That was going to leave a bruise. I mean, I had hit my head too, but at least the steering wheel was padded.

"Mmmf," came from somebody behind me.

"All part of the plan, guys. Gotta get used to them rapid stops."

"I think I dislocated my shoulder," Nudge said. "It's back in now, but—"

I cut her off. "Well, now you know what _not_ to do if we're in a car crash."

"You can go now," Fang said, pulling himself up. He touched his head and winced.

"How long am I supposed to stop for?" I asked, and twisted around. "Anybody? Stops?"

"They only stop for like a second on TV," Gazzy said.

"Right." I lifted my foot off the brake and moved it to the accelerator. Alright, time to think of something leaderly to say. "Just a second. Good job, Gasman! That was your first Max Quiz. Testing your knowledge of useful things. Everybody else, the Gasman just outperformed you. You got shown up by an eight-year-old. Shame on you." I cut my eyes to Fang. "Now, how do we get to the highway?"

It took us a while to get to the highway, but once on it, we drove off into the sunset. Cans of food got passed around along with crackers, and a few blankets were pulled out of the trunk and distributed. I scored a can of chickpeas—not much of a dinner, but a childhood at the School had taught me to deal with not having enough to eat.

The Flock fell asleep as the night wore on, but I kept driving, going as fast as I could. Making up for lost time.

Tears blurred my vision but I blinked them away.

 _We're on our way, Ari. I just hope we aren't too late._

* * *

 _Not too much to say about this chapter, other than it might be the end of Dr. M and Ella's appearance in TNTS. What did you think of them?_

 _And for the record, the description of how they hotwired a car is more or less accurate. I did do research, but it was like a year ago, so I can't tell you which method they're using._


	19. Cacophony

_I'd like to thank my beta reader, Tokoloshe Monster, and everyone who reviewed: pancakes-for-you, jrits, a guest, and the two anons who are probably the same person._

* * *

Wendy was the first to wake up as the orange liquid she was in drained away. The door to her tank opened and a whitecoat pulled her out, easing the plastic suit off of her. They had just put it on over her clothes, so it wasn't that big of a deal.

"I'm so, so sorry about this," the whitecoat babbled.

It was dark enough that nobody could see Wendy roll her eyes. Dr. Johnson. Of course.

"You need to come with me, okay?" Johnson's voice was permanently soft, like a flower that had just come into bloom. It made Wendy want to shriek, but instead she just pretended she was a sheep and nodded dully, following Johnson.

As she passed by the tanks holding the kids she had grown up with, she looked at them and nodded to herself. A man in a white lab coat stood by one of the tanks, pushing buttons and muttering about hormone levels and salts. He didn't even look at her as she walked past him. The orange light of the room gleamed off of his glasses and his scruffy sneakers, white but filthy with dirt.

Johnson led her out of the room, her flats making no sound on the floor. Wendy wanted shoes like that, but all she had were stupid squeaky sneakers. Maybe she could make Johnson buy her better shoes.

"Where am I going?" she asked.

Johnson smiled down at her. "We need to run a few performance tests, alright?"

"Okay," Wendy said. This in particular was nothing new. They were always running tests of some kind, and it was always bor-ing. Sometimes she would play along with their dumb head games, and sometimes she would play her own.

They left the Processing floor. Johnson led Wendy to a white door with PSI/OBS written on it and showed her into the room.

At Johnson's direction, Wendy sat down on the chair in the middle of the room. When the woman left, closing the door behind her, Wendy swung her legs back and forth, glancing around the room.

The chair was the only furniture in the room. Bor-ing. One of the walls was actually a mirror, though, so that was cool. Wendy made faces at herself until Johnson came back, carrying what looked like a motorcycle helmet.

"I'm going to put this on you, okay? And then I'm going to say something and you tell me what you hear."

Wendy nodded.

The helmet was heavy, cool, padded on the inside, and it blocked out all sound. It had flaps that went out forward, too—not enough to weigh Wendy's head down, but enough to blinker her.

The lack of sound was odd, and Wendy paused for a moment as she processed it, biting down on her lower lip.

Johnson knelt slightly so they were eye-to-eye. Her mouth was moving, and Wendy had to strain to read her lips. After repeating a sentence a few times, Johnson removed the helmet.

"Well?"

Wendy shrugged, swung her feet. "Um, I'm not completely sure. I think it was something about elephants?" She blinked. "Elephants something something and something something the plains of Africa."

She could say whatever she wanted to and they wouldn't know. What idiots.

Johnson smiled. "That was good. The sentence was, _Elephants, giraffes, zebras, and lions roam the plains of Africa_." The smile faded from her face and she tapped her chin a few times, lost in thought. "Maybe if you _had_ to rely on it…" She looked down at Wendy, sitting on the chair, and shrugged. "I'm going to put the visor down over your face, and then I'm going to say something. Tell me what you hear."

With the visor down, Wendy was cut off from her senses. She could feel things, but it was—different. Limited.

 _Is this what they felt like when she was the one in charge?_

The helmet came off, and Wendy shook her head. "I didn't hear anything. It's quiet in there."

Johnson sighed. "Nothing? Really?"

Wendy nodded.

"Well, let's try something else…"

There were more tests. Johnson would hold a card with a picture on it behind her back and Wendy would guess as to what picture was on the card. Johnson would listen to music and Wendy, helmeted, had to hum the beat. Johnson would think of a number and Wendy would have to guess it…

It took hours, and Wendy only got a few questions right. As time progressed, Johnson stopped smiling at the right answers, and her forehead scrunched up in frustration.

"I didn't do anything wrong, did I?" Wendy asked, tilting her head to the right.

"What? No! No, you didn't do anything wrong, Wendy. But… give me a moment, okay? There's something I need to think about." Johnson left the room, fiddling with the small black device attached to her right ear.

Wendy felt like laughing. This really took no effort. It was too easy to fake, to pretend that she was stupid, to lead them on. This was easy as flying and twice as fun.

* * *

It was working, it was _working_ , and they all knew it.

Four hours in and the kid was developing at a decent pace—limbs elongating, bone structure changing, wings beginning to develop.

Somebody had been thoughtful and ran down to the break room to get them all coffee. Reilly was sipping his while he and the Pro-Dev guy watched a near-meaningless stream of numbers flash by on the screen. Well, near-meaningless to him, anyway. Pro-Dev guy presumably knew what was up.

Nothing was changing at a rate fast enough to merit alarm or even special alert, so Reilly sipped his coffee and watched the orange light of the tank cast an odd kind of wavy shadow on the floor.

Everything was fine, but…

But Jesus, what if he left the room? What if something happened, like last time, with Johansson? Reilly flinched. Johansson had been about the same age as him, and now Johansson was dead.

That wouldn't happen to a kid. Not on his watch, anyway.

"Sir?" The girl from Obs asked. "Dr. Reilly, sir, they're saying that the _aves_ are having difficulties? The boys?"

Reilly took a long swig of his coffee and tried to will his hands to stop shaking. Which cup was this? His second? Third? "I want to keep an eye on this kid," he said. "I assigned you guys to this team for a reason, didn't I?"

Obs Girl bit her lip. "Yes, sir. I'll go—I'll go see what I can do, sir."

Reilly nodded. Official. Composed. Focused. "Good."

She left him alone with his coffee. A while after he finished it, a fresh cup was pressed into his hand. He blinked at the woman handing it to him. Midforties, chunky, Latina. "What time is it?"

"'Bout two in the morning," she said. "We put together a secondary squad if you and yours want to sleep."

Reilly shook his head, and she shrugged.

"On your head, then," she said.

Another hour passed, or maybe it was more. Reilly's coffee grew cold in his hand and he drank it in a single gulp. The Pro-Dev guy hadn't moved from the tank's screen, and it didn't seem that he would any time soon. The others were looking at data printouts and bickering amongst themselves.

His eyes were drawn back to the tank again, where the kid slept. Or was he just knocked out? Was there a difference? Jesus, it was _definitely_ two in the morning if he was getting philosophical.

Think about: something else.

Think about: brain surgery.

Think about: brain surgery, "dissection."

Think about: brain surgery, "dissection," "telepath."

404 FILES NOT FOUND. SERVOR ERROR: TOO MUCH CAFFEINE.

Fine.

Think about: something else.

Think about: DNA modification.

Think about: DNA modification, "post-embryonic," "grafting," "cross-species (two or more)," "survival rates (long-term)."

404 FILES NOT FOUND. SEARCH ERROR: TOO SPECIFIC. TRY LOWERING YOUR HOPES, PUNK.

Tune in.

Flick through: tired faces, bags under eyes, shaking hands.

Zoom in on: tank, orange liquid, dark plastic, kid.

Sleeping kid. Dead kid?

Kid was lankier than before, chest moving slowly.

Zoom in on: green words flashing across a black screen. Numbers. Percent symbols. Chunks of encoded DNA.

Tune out.

Think about: Sports Illustrated Magazine.

Think about: anti-caffeine pills.

Think about: heart palpitations.

Think about: "Batchelder, ?." AGE-7 H- W- EYES-BR HAIR-BR

Think about: Why was he strangling her?

Reilly stared at the kid's face. Right now it was placid, like the surface of an undisturbed lake. Was this a violent kid? Was this a so-called feral child? If he were, would it be wise to run this experiment on him?

His comm buzzed, sending a wake-up shock of static into his mind via his right ear. "Reilly? Reilly, you there?"

"Huh? Yeah, yeah. What is it?" Trying to look professional and preoccupied (trying to look like he knew what he was doing), he made as if to press a hand to the earpiece, but ended up spilling cold milky coffee all over the floor, his lab coat, and somebody's hair. "Shit! Sorry, sorry."

"We… we have a problem."

"Uh, who is this?"

Static crackled in his ear as the person on the other end of the line sighed. "This is Sally, and we have a problem wi-"

Reilly cut her off. "I'm trying to keep an eye on the kid down here. I'm not in childhood development, but I have a guy in Pro-Dev if you want to talk to him."

"No, Reilly, Garcia put _you_ in ch—"

"I'm _delegating_ the task to my subordinates while I focus on the more immediate concern," Reilly snapped. "We've run hundreds of simulations for these kids, page the geeks if you want to check for a statistical anomaly. Now, do you want Pro-Dev or not?"

Another crackle of static. "No, I think I'll do without. I'll talk to Howard about this. Over and out, Reilly."

"Over and out," Reilly echoed, and Sally clicked off.

* * *

It took Sally Johnson, PhD, a good five minutes to recover from the comm with Reilly. Never mind that she was a good ten years his senior. Never mind that she would have to deal with worse before the night (morning?) was over. Never mind that there was a potential disaster going on down in the Development room. She tugged a bit of her lab coat up and used it as a handkerchief into which she could sob freely.

She counted down the seconds: one-eighty for crying, one-twenty for aftercare. Aloe tissues were in her right breast pocket and moisturizing lotion was in the left jeans pocket. Rub off the tears, smooth on the lotion.

Despite the reassurance of having her face clear, her hands were shaking as she pushed in the four-digit code to comm somebody in the building. After a short moment, the call went through. "Dr. Johnson paging Dr. Howard."

"Yeah, kiddo?"

"Wendy isn't psi-positive. I, I—"

"Spit it out, go on."

She inhaled, choking on a sob. "I— _I'm sorry_."

"Hey, hey, it's not _your_ fault. Just a flaw in the genes, right?"

 _Okay, Sally, don't let him see you cry._ She sniffled a little anyway. "Right."

"Nothing that can't be fixed or explained, right?"

Another traitorous sniffle escaped. "Right."

"And so it would be best if you brought the girl up here so I could talk to her, right?"

"Right."

"All right then." His voice was so soft, so comforting, and even with the accent it reminded her of her father. "I'll see you upstairs."

The comm clicked off.

It took her another moment to gather herself. She covered her hands with her face and breathed in for a five-count. No paper bag. This would have to do.

Okay. Okay.

She strode back into the room, the portrait of a competent, independent scientist with her mind on the job. "Wendy," she said as cheerfully as she could manage, "You need to come with me. We're going to talk to Dr. Howard, okay?"

Wendy tilted her head and stared at Sally with wide blue eyes. For a moment she didn't say anything, but when she did speak, her voice was slow. Tremulous. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, sweetheart, everything's fine," Sally lied. "We just need to run a few tests, okay?"

"More tests?"

"Yes. Nothing painful, I swear."

Wendy blinked once, twice, and then, swinging her feet, she jumped off of the chair and headed for the door.

As they walked up the stairs to Dr. Howard's office, Sally's stomach was flip-flopping. This wasn't going to be easy. This wasn't going to be pleasant.

 _You get too attached to the kids_ , they always said to her. _In a job like this, that's not something that you can afford to do_. _You have to think of them like they're lab rats_.

But the thing was, even in high school she had cried when the lab rats died. That's why she was kicked out of her pre-School job—they were experimenting on dogs, and she was the one responsible for overseeing their post-experiment "release."

"Release." What a dirty word. Is that how they let themselves sleep at night? They killed animals and said that they were doing the right thing. They said that the animals didn't feel any pain. They said that it wasn't like the animals were _people_. They said that she needed to stop crying.

She had loaded ten dogs into her backseat and driven off to the nearest no-kill shelter.

When her old employers found out, they were _furious_. It turned out that the dogs were being used to test a new vaccine for a hyper-communicable virus. Turned out that the other dogs at the no-kill, the other cats at the no-kill, the _volunteers_ at the no-kill… turned out that they got sick.

Some of them made it. Most of them didn't.

And Sally Johnson, PhD, was out on the street with a criminal record and two weeks severance pay.

The Itex recruitment was nothing short of a miracle, and she refused to let herself mess it up. For years she stayed as detached herself as much as possible from the poor, poor babies in cages. She had saved her tears for her pillow and her pity for the children who didn't have to die because an autocratic Director decided that anything short of perfection was inacceptable. Thank God for private funding, or she would have had to shut herself off from every kid here.

Dr. Howard was a good man, she told herself. He wouldn't order a little girl, an innocent little girl to—

No. He wouldn't. She wouldn't let him.

Her hand balled into a fist and her stomach balled into a knot, Sally knocked on the door to Dr. Howard's office.

"Come in," somebody called.

Not Dr. Howard.

She pushed open the door anyway and, holding Wendy's small, trembling hand, stepped in.

Dr. Howard sat at his desk, and somebody… somebody who looked _awfully_ like Dr. Jeb Batchelder sat in a folding chair, glaring at him. But it couldn't be Dr. Batchelder, because Dr. Batchelder was in Colorado, right?

Apparently not, as Dr. Howard cut her train of thought off with, "You remember Dr. Batchelder, right, Sal?"

"Yes, sir. Hello, Dr. Batchelder."

Dr. Batchelder nodded once in her direction and then turned his back to her again.

"I, um, I brought Wendy," she said. "Um, I know she isn't psi-positive but she's still very bright, we could still, um, you know… I know they're being aged up and she's not an eligible replacement but that doesn't mean that she's useless, you know, she's… she's not a bad kid, we could keep her around…"

"Thank you," Dr. Batchelder said. "You can leave now."

"Don't be so rude, Jeb," Dr. Howard drawled. "Sal, I think I'm going to have a chat with Wendy here, is that alright?"

Sally bit her lip. Looked at the floor. Didn't say, _I don't trust Dr. Batchelder around any child_ , _he's so rude now_. Didn't say, _I want to protect Wendy_ , _I want to keep her safe_. Didn't say, _No, I'm staying here_.

All of those options, wasted, as by some compulsion she nodded and walked out, closing the door behind her.

* * *

It took a fair amount of self-control for Wendy not to snap out _What are you losers looking at?_

Because they were both staring at her—Batchelder with something like… dislike? Disgust? Wendy looked at him.

Yes. Hatred. Contempt. Like the way his kid looked at her when she told him what she thought of him.

When Batchelder's kid had his hand around her throat, though, he didn't look that smug anymore. His eyes were wide and blank. She had made plenty of eyes gloss over like that, and his weren't any different.

Puny human minds—the easiest thing to bend to her will.

Batchelder's mind was clouded over, locked down. She couldn't get in. What was—whatever. She could tell what he was thinking without reading his mind. She was that good. His thoughts were written on his face. Something was weird with his head, and he thought that gave him the lead. Nothing new.

But the way Howard looked at her; that was something different. Usually his mind had an edge to it, like there was a computer deciding what move would be the most advantageous, but now the look and feel of calculation was gone, replaced with… something else.

Hunger, of a sort.

Wendy focused in on him, which, given the relative seclusion of his office, wasn't hard to do.

 **opportunity? now that she's not useful… did batchelder do this? would soft bitch mind? would soft bitch notice?**

Interesting. Thoughts rocketing around at a mile a minute, hidden behind…

"So, kiddo," Howard said, and smiled at her. "You were having a problem with Dr. Sally?"

Wendy paused for a second, weighed her options, and decided that _ruthless and calculating_ wouldn't work here. Not around Batchelder. Batchelder, after all, raised the other one. So instead, she widened her eyes, "Problem? I don't know what you mean."

"The tests," Batchelder said. "For psychic potential."

She shrugged. "With the helmet? It was dark. I was scared. Did I do something bad?"

Batchelder's eyes narrowed, and she made sure to flinch. Pull back. Look scared.

Inside she lit up like a Christmas tree. _He thinks I'm weak!_ Her mind was singing. _He's writing me off! This is too, too easy!_

And, of course, it was. Batchelder turned his focus to Howard again. "You see? Not only is the clone incapable of her duplicate's psi capabilities; she's emotionally unprepared. Angel would eat her for lunch."

Wendy reached out with her mind, touched upon Howard's.

 **keep her around keep it quiet experiment on the brain maybe she just wasn't pushed far enough**

Touched. Pushed.

 **keep her around she deserves another chance pushed pushed pushed useful maybe she's useful**

Perfect.

"Yeah, Batchelder, mate, even if she ain't as good as your kid—you named her _Angel_? Jeez. Even if she ain't as good as that she's still bright enough to run circles around some of you. We can teach her to code and stick her in with the programmers. Or she could do low-level bacterial research. And of course there's always the potential for behavioral analysis."

Batchelder's mouth was pressed into a thin white line and his eyebrows were scrunched together. Wendy tried her hardest not to snicker at the sight of a man who was _clearly_ about to blow his top. Man, this was great. Better than TV or messing with the muties' heads before the Erasers came to get them. This was on a whole 'nother level.

Before Batchelder could say anything, the comm on Howard's desk buzzed. "What can I do ya for? … _What_!?" His eyes widened and he nearly dropped the comm. Wendy blinked and checked his thoughts again, zoning out on the conversation itself.

 **testosterone poisoning fatal partial lung failure we need better security guess i'll have to send a couple in for disposal**

"Hey, kiddo, your friends are dead," Howard told her as he put the comm down on his desk. "Well, your brother and the other two. One of the girls is going to bite it soon."

Wendy blinked. _How did you react to something like this?_ She started at Howard blankly for a few minutes before deciding that, in a situation like this, playing the idiot six-year-old would be in her favor. "W-what?"

"They bit it. Ate it. Went to the big laboratory in the sky. Are currently ex-mutants. You only have one, well, one and a half sisters now."

"Oh no," Wendy whispered, and tried to force the tears up. "You're kidding, right?" Were they expecting a strong emotional reaction? After all, kids died here every day. Was she supposed to care about a certain group of them just because they constantly surrounded her? They said Peter was her brother, but it wasn't like he had powers.

"So Wendy," Howard said, "Why don't you go back to the dorm? We might send your sisters over there once they're done growing."

Wendy nodded and walked out of Howard's office. Instead of heading back downstairs, however, she pressed her back up against the wall and listened.

" _I swear to god if I find out you had anything to do with this_ ," a scratchy voice spoke. Somebody had comm'd Howard.

"I can assure you, that won't be a problem," Batchelder said. "But that does raise a problem—at the moment you have one and a half children when, previously, you had six."

" _Thank you for clarifying the situation for me; I had almost_ _forgotten_."

Wendy rolled her eyes. Dr. Garcia was always like this. Being in his head was so dull—an endless line of checks and balances. No panic, no pain, and the only color was the undercurrent of anxiety. At least like this, when she didn't have to deal with him, she could appreciate what was going on.

Batchelder cleared his throat. "What would you say if I could get you six children?"

" _I'd remind you of the fact that you already had an opportunity to get us six children. And you failed_."

"I can assure you that the sentiment that led me to raise Maximum and her Flock like human children will not be a problem here," Batchelder said. "Not to mention that this one already has a sense of her purpose, doesn't she?"

A static-filled sigh crackled over the comm, and Wendy found herself grinning. Batchelder's kid had been boring and lame, but the man himself? Not half bad.

"I suggest that we take the clone to Canada," Batchelder continued. "That way she won't be susceptible to any accidents."

" _This reminds me of when you suggested that you supervise the first batch's training in Colorado. How am I supposed to trust you?"_

Batchelder cleared his throat. But before he could speak, Dr. Howard chimed in. "What if I went with him? I'm head of Erasers, Erasers trained this chick for like… six years? I'm _basically_ her dad. 'Sides, we don't have much going on that I'd need to fill out Itex papers for—you wouldn't miss me much."

Garcia's sigh crackled over the comm. " _Fine_."

Batchelder spoke again. "I'll go wait for her to drop. Max II, isn't it?" There was the squeaking sound of plastic on linoleum, and then the tapping of shoes.

Wendy's eyes widened, and she scurried off down the hall and out of sight.

In a glimpse over her shoulder, she saw Jeb Batchelder striding out of the room, hands in the pockets of his white lab coat and fluorescent lights reflected in his glasses. His sneakers squeaked on the tiles.

* * *

 _Note: Updates are back down to happening on Saturdays for the forseeable future._

 _And a fair amount of this chapter was written after I read way too much Chuck Palahniuk. Hashtag no regrets._

 _So, three characters died offscreen in this chapter. I'm kind of worried about how I handled it. Wendy doesn't care, because Wendy has a view of the world warped by both her powers and her upbringing in a world where death is cheap and whitecoats are constantly backstabbing each other. But do you care? There will be some exploration of the other two living bird clones, and we'll get to see more reactions to those deaths, but at the moment - how are things? What do you think of Wendy and her powers?_


	20. Pink-Tinged Peace

_Thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to the people who reviewed in between updates: FANGIRLIN (no, you're not annoying) and an unnamed Guest._

* * *

 _Jesus Christ, would it kill the world to give me a break once in a while?_ I was three seconds away from banging my head on the steering wheel in hyper-stimulated anger and frustration. The van, as if sensing my annoyance, started to shake.

…Wait, no, the van wasn't psychic. I was just clenching my hands into fists, making the steering wheel tremble.

This drive was supposed to be two hours, give or take. But now we were looking at twelve or so. If we hadn't decided to pull over and buy gas and found out from the cashier inside the gas station store that we were over two hundred miles away from where we were supposed to be, then I don't know how badly we would have gotten lost.

"Um… Max?" Angel asked from her seat in the back.

I turned my head to look at her. "Yeah, sweetie?"

"Could we stop for a minute? There's a rest stop nearby. I… um… I need to go to the bathroom."

"Sure," I said, and turned my attention back to the road, looking for the rest stop.

It turned out that exiting the highway was hard. Especially when I was in the far left lane, the exit was on the far right, and the middle lanes were full of idiots who didn't understand that I prioritized my speed over their need to hog their lanes.

There was honking, swearing, and I might have flipped off a few a-holes.

Shut up, it was cathartic.

On the bright side, we made it to the rest stop without any injuries. The bumper of the van was a little banged up, but hey. It was a _bumper_. Getting _bumped_ was part of the job description. If God or whoever designed cars didn't want bumpers to get bumped, then he would have named them _donottouchers_ or something like that.

The Flock unsteadily piled out of the van.

"You guys look like you have vertigo," I said, getting out myself. It was nice to be outside, to feel the fresh air in my hair and to smell the smells of middling-to-late summer (crap, dirt, and sweat). Even though driving beat the heck out of being hungry and sore after a long flight, being inside a small, cramped space wasn't my thing. "Everything alright?"

Iggy, bent over with his hands on his knees, was the first to respond. "Everything's _fine_ ," he said. "Can't you tell?" He shifted his weight but ended up falling face-first onto the ground.

I flipped him the bird, although the gesture was lost on him.

"Iggy, Max flipped you off," Gasman said.

Or not.

"Seriously though, is everything alright?" I repeated. "What's up with you guys? I know we haven't been in cars much but _I'm_ fine."

"That's because you were the one driving," Nudge said. She had flopped down spread-eagled in the grass, her face pressed into the dirt. "Oh God make the spinning stop I'm going to barf."

"Put your head between your knees," I told her. "And I want us to spend five minutes here before we get back on the road. We're getting closer to the School, so we can't be too safe."

Everybody except Fang groaned.

"Whaaat?" When nobody looked me in the eyes, I threw my hands in the air. "Talk to me, guys!"

"You can't drive at all," Iggy said. "And I feel like I'm dying. I might just be dying." He gasped and placed a hand on his chest. "Oh, God, everything is going black… Fang, I don't know how you deal with it… Before I go, I just want you to know… Gasman, you—you are _not the father_!"

"Very funny, wise guy," I said, over the sound of Gazzy's laughter. "But I can, in fact, drive. We didn't crash once, and it's been nine hours. Not once."

Okay, we had bumped into guardrails a few times, but a quick pit stop at a 7-Eleven for a few bottles of five-hour energy had taken care of that. I could sleep when we got Ari out of that hellhole of a mad science laboratory.

"Max, vans aren't supposed to go up on two wheels for longer than two minutes," Iggy said. "If that turn hadn't leveled out then we'd have flipped. Big boom. Fun to hear, not fun to be."

I waved a hand. "The turn leveled out, didn't it? We're fine _now_ , aren't we?"

"I puked in my mouth and had to swallow it," Nudge said. She had managed to pull herself to her feet and had started to stretch. "Does anybody have a pen and a piece of paper?"

Angel also stood. "I have paper and a sharpie in my bag," she said. "Help yourself." She headed off for the bathroom. I gave her a look—what was up with that?—and she smiled over her shoulder at me and mouthed _don't worry_.

"I'm going to the bathroom too," Iggy said, and headed away from the van like it was about to explode.

I scowled. Wasn't he pretending to pass out a few minutes ago? Was he doing that just to make me doubt myself? Well, it wasn't going to work.

As he loped off, I turned to Fang. "My driving is that bad?"

Fang shook his head.

"Give me your opinion in ten words or more."

"You could do better, but you're getting us where we need to go. The kids'll learn to deal now that you're in charge."

The last five words resonated in my mind. _Now that you're in charge_. No Jeb to ask for help, to patch up wounds, to teach us how to fight. I would have to be the one leading the Flock.

It took half an hour before I could convince everybody to get back into the van. When we were back on the road, we all lapsed into silence.

I kept going, eyes flicking from the map on the dashboard to the road ahead. The road was populated still, because we weren't that far from Vegas, but everything felt quiet and unreal. I could hear nothing through the rolled-up windows, and the air that I was breathing smelled like scented sprays and filters. I was going fast, faster than I could run, but I was stuck inside of something else.

Would it feel like this if we were flying?

Should I have another energy drink?

"Max?" Nudge's voice was low, quavering. I looked up into the rearview mirror so I could see her. She was chewing on her lower lip, and blinking more than usual.

"Uh-huh?"

"Did the School…" She was playing with a piece of paper as she spoke, unfolding and refolding it. "Can they change the way that we think? Like what if you were actually really quiet and that was like in your brain when you were a kid, but they did something and then you weren't, like, _you_ anymore? Could that happen?"

"I don't know," I said. "Why?"

"O—oh, it's nothing. I just wondered what we would be like if we hadn't grown up there. Like would Fang still like black, and would Iggy and Gazzy still want to blow stuff up, and would you still be tough and would I still talk a lot and like… like, you know?"

I returned my gaze to the road. No need for us to be a horrible crash accident, right? It's not like I knew what I was doing, and there was no reason for me to let anybody see that.

Don't ever show weakness. That was how I had to live my life. So even though I had never been outside like this, I had to stay strong. For my Flock.

But what if it wasn't like that? What if I wasn't like that? What if there was nobody for me to take care of? How would that Max act? If I saw her walking down the street, would I recognize her? Would I want to?

I kept my mouth shut (amazing, right?) while I mulled over my answers. I couldn't let Nudge know that I felt uncertainty, but at the same time, I didn't have a straight answer to give her.

"Um," I said, eloquent as usual. And then I made an executive decision—the best one in an uncertain situation. I told the truth. "Look, Nudge, scientists are a bunch of freaks— _crazy_ freaks, not _mutant_ freaks. So it's possible that they changed stuff in our brains, but I don't think it would be in their best interests to do so. But if they did then they messed up big-time."

"I know," Nudge said, and sighed. "So do you think that they did?"

Before I could respond with a _they might have_ , somebody spoke up from the backseat. "Naaaah. Why would you mess with somebody's brain if you're going to raise them in a dog crate and scar them for life?"

"Thanks for the _interruption_ , Iggy," I snapped. "But I don't remember asking for your input."

Was he _trying_ to get me off my A-game? If I was going to be the leader, I had to be the alpha. I had to be the one in charge, the one with the answers. I couldn't let him take that away from me.

He continued like I hadn't said anything. "Look at Gazzy's allergies, or my eyes. When they made us, they didn't have the technology to do physical stuff right, even after the fact, much less mental. So if you're insane in the brain, you only have yourself to blame."

Nudge giggled. "Thanks, Iggy."

"Now I'm going back to sleep," he said. "Or as close to sleep as I can get in this roller coaster of a van."

In a few minutes, they were all dozing, and I had the relative privacy of the driver's seat to myself. I sighed and swallowed down tears.

I had already gotten us lost once over the course of the night.

What if—what if I couldn't do it? What if everything I did was this messed-up?

My breath was ragged. Goddamnit, this wasn't fair! I was only fourteen. I didn't want this. I didn't want any of this. I wanted to be back in the E-shaped house with the rest of the Flock, with the Erasers back in California, and with no threat of anything on the horizon.

The road ahead blurred, and pinpricks of light became dots. I blinked, trying to drive away the tears that had risen. Keep going. Keep going.

The hours and the miles flew by as I tried to keep the car on its wheels, in its lane, and at a solid ten miles above the speed limit.

Fang touched my shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up, okay? You've got this."

"Wh—what if I don't?" My voice was quavering, and I bit my lip to stop myself from saying any more. The muscles in my shoulders tensed, and I stared at the road ahead, not letting myself look at him.

But—this was Fang. So I let myself relax, if only by a little bit.

He didn't let me down. "You will. Look, you're the leader. If none of this had happened, and you had said to us _we're not going to be with Jeb anymore_ , we all would have followed you."

"Yeah?" I asked, forcing my voice to remain even.

He nodded, and the corner of his mouth lifted. It might have been a smile.

I smiled back. The sun began to rise over the horizon, pink light pushing back the darkness.

We stayed on the road until five in the morning, when my eyes started to slide shut against my will. I pulled over to the shoulder, ignoring the complaints of other drivers, and rested my head on the wheel as the rest of my Flock began to wake up.

"You okay?" Fang asked.

"'mmm. Tired. Gimme, um, gimme five."

Even though I wasn't looking at him, I could tell that Fang's jaw twitched. I had seen it before when Gazzy, Angel, and Ari decided to make pancakes for my birthday and ended up nearly burning down the kitchen. It was a twitch that meant _I am Fang and I am so much smarter than this idiot, and clearly my lustrous, silky, locks are an indicator of that_.

Fang raised an eyebrow at me, and I waved my hand in his face.

"Don'— don' start," I slurred. " _Five_ minutes."

"Max, we should head to a motel anyway," Iggy said. "You need to sleep, and we need to figure out how we're going to break into the School and where we're going to go after it."

With great effort, I pulled myself up and glared at Fang and Iggy. "Do not tell me," I enunciated, words fueled by anger, "that I need sleep. That I need a plan. I have a plan. We are going to drive this van into the goddamn School, have Ari jump through a window into the backseat, and then we are going to zoom off into the freaking sunset. That is the plan."

Iggy snorted and Fang raised an eyebrow. "We're already on an exit," Fang told me. "We can stop at a motel, get some solid planning in."

"Sure thing, Chatty Cathy," I said. My words were starting to run together again.

The drive into town was worse than all of the hours on the highway. At least on the highway, all I had to focus on was staying in a straight line. The exit ramp into the town, however, was a different story. The road curved, there were traffic lights and intersections, and making turns was enough to give me gray hairs. I parked the van at the first free corner, thanking my lucky stars that we hadn't ended up in an accident.

It felt like I was moving through molasses as I disentangled myself from my seat and stood up slowly on the pavement. I tried to take a step forward and stumbled, the world swirling around me.

I frowned. Usually this wasn't a problem. Sure I was kind of hungry, and it would be normal for me to feel tired, but a reaction this extreme?

Oh, right. Shoulder. The painkillers Dr. M had given me were sure doing their job, because I had completely forgotten about the whole _getting shot_ thing.

I shoved my hands into my jeans pocket to make sure that the little bottle was still in there. Good.

 _Take one every six hours_ , Dr. M had said. I had taken a few on the road, when the twinges started up again, but I wasn't sure if painkillers and energy drinks mixed well. I shrugged with my good shoulder and undid the cap one-handedly, popping a pill into my mouth and dry-swallowing.

I staggered after the others, who had started off down the road. Nudge had taken the map from Fang and was combining directions to the nearest motel with running commentary on how pretty the sky looked just after the sun had risen.

The walk there was… interesting. I was riding an odd combination of a caffeine/sugar buzz, a painkiller chill, and a general tiredness from the lack of sleep. When you added that combination to the fact that I had been staring ahead for the better part of the past ten hours and not moving my legs much, you had a very stumbly Max.

But no, I wasn't holding on to anybody for support. I could walk on my own. That's what I told Fang, who had decided to frogmarch me down the street.

"Let _go_ of me!" I finally snapped, and kicked his legs out from under him. As he hit the ground with a nearly silent _oof_ , I yanked my arm free from his. He wasn't dragging me down. If he did, I wouldn't get back up.

He glared at me as he stood. I glared right back at him, and then at a few people on the street that had stopped to stare at us. What jerks. Couldn't they mind their own business?

It took us about twenty minutes to find the motel, and then another twenty to argue the clerk into giving the six of us one room. We didn't need two beds, or three, or whatever. We needed one. Why did it take them so long to _get_ that? It took most of my remaining self-control not to haul back, punch the clerk in the face, grab a key, and get us a room.

The room itself, when we got it, wasn't that bad. There was a desk pushed over by the window, a television even smaller than the one back in the E-shaped house, and a microwave on a counter, but most of the space was occupied by the bed. That wasn't saying much, seeing as the bed would fit _maybe_ two of us, if we kept our wings in tight. But I was too tired to complain.

I flopped down onto the bed, took another painkiller, and let myself start to doze.

"Wake me up in six hours," I mumbled, my eyes sliding shut.

* * *

 _I like Max POV quite a bit. How do you think I'm doing with it?_


	21. Going Down Swinging

_Thanks to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to those who reviewed: LivvyB and AbsolutelyAbbie. Also thanks to Jrits, for helping me go over a passage of Nudge's dialogue._

* * *

"Okay," Iggy said, the first of them to speak. "Let's get this on." He sat down on the floor, cross-legged. No need for him to make an ass out of himself groping around the room. It wasn't like they would be here long anyway. "Angel, Fang, you guys are the ones with the maps, the blueprints, right? Jeb's stuff? Let's see 'em."

"Interesting choice of words," Fang said.

Iggy flipped the bird in his general direction. "Whatever. Describe the locations and then give me an idea of the plan so I can figure out what bombs to make."

For a few moments, the only sounds in the room were the rustling of paper and Max's slow but steady breathing.

"There are four basement levels and another five levels aboveground," Fang finally said. "Windows on the aboveground levels. It's surrounded by an electric fence. In the middle of some state park in the Dead Mountains."

"The Dead Mountains," Iggy repeated. "Somebody actually thought it would be a good idea to put a School in a place called the Dead Mountains."

"It's in California, right?" Nudge asked. "Maybe they bury celebrities there. Maybe there's like, Alive Mountains somewhere else. And then Midlife Crisis Mountains with shiny cars and loose women. Hey, Iggy, what's a loose woman?"

"Something that you don't find in the Dead Mountains," Fang told her. "Moving on. They're keeping the majority of the experiments and the major laboratories on the four basement floors along with the computers, the resident scientists on the upper floors, and supplies and the like on the lower floors. The ground floor, like the basement, is a place to store supplies and test experiments."

That was the most Iggy had heard Fang say that week.

"What supplies?" Gazzy asked. "Scalpels and hacksaws?"

"Maybe pens?" Angel suggested. "Clipboards?"

"The latest in lab coat couture?" Nudge chimed in.

"Disposable stuff, most likely." Fang said. "From what I can tell there's no overhead security, so we can go in and out from above."

Iggy nodded. "We can probably bomb our way in, but there's got to be higher security downstairs. I remember… that place was always full of Erasers." It was hell on earth, hearing their threats and heavy breaths, smelling their stink of sweat and bloody meat, but not being able to see them and dodge fast enough. He had learned, but he still had the scars.

But even then, even the cages were pleasant compared to—he cut off that train of thought. "How many Erasers do you think there will be? I'm estimating one grenade to three Erasers for a definite out, one to five for a maybe. Pipe bombs maybe more, like seven to ten, but those are harder to make. Jesus, why did they have to be so big?" He clenched his hands into fists to stop their shaking. "Whatever. When we're done with this, you guys need to get us bomb-building supplies. Fertilizer, wire, plastic casing." Hopefully they wouldn't get pulled aside for questioning, like he, Gazzy, and Jeb had a few years ago.

"We bomb our way in, grab Ari, fly out?" Nudge said. "That sounds like a good idea, but can we even fly, like, inside? Are the hallways gonna be wide enough? Who's going to carry Ari? What if we get lost? There weren't any floor blueprints—floorprints? What if Max gets caught? Her shoulder's busted and everything. What if—mmph!" There was a sound of flesh hitting flesh as somebody, probably Fang, put a hand over her mouth.

"We're going to bomb our way in, split up, find Ari, grab Ari, fly out," Fang said. "Two teams. Me and Max, you and Iggy."

"Hey!" The Gasman protested. "I have to build bombs and I know how to use them better than you and Max and Nudge. You can't leave me out of this _twice_!"

"Gazzy," Iggy said. "Calm down, okay? Fang's right for once in his life."

"Not you, too," the Gasman muttered. "'S not fair."

"He doesn't want to get left behind just because he's younger," Angel said. "Me neither."

"No, no, you guys are looking at it wrong," Iggy insisted. "We're not leaving you behind, you're covering our backs. Come on; think about it. Somebody's going to need to keep throwing bombs, to create a diversion while we go get Ari. We nab him, meet up with you guys, and then we get out."

"What if—what if you don't get out?" Angel asked, her voice suddenly very small. "What if none of you get out?"

Iggy set his jaw. "Then you leave," he told her. "You get as far out as you can, as fast as you can. You find someplace to stay for the night and—"

Fang cut him off before he could finish. "That's not going to happen."

It would have been nice, Iggy thought, if he could have agreed with Fang. If he could be certain that a plan would work out, and that there wouldn't be any last minute hitches that led to lives being ruined. It would have made his life a lot easier. But that wasn't the case. "You can't guarantee that," he said. "But that's not the point. Now, let's get on the bomb-building."

"I'll take Nudge and Angel to Home Depot and get you supplies," Fang said. When he spoke again, his voice sounded further away—he had probably stood up. "I saw one on the map."

"Thanks, man." Iggy nodded in his direction as he reached for his backpack.

As the door closed behind Fang and the girls, Max stirred, rustling the sheets, and mumbled something. Iggy held still, trying not to wake her. They had been quieter than usual while planning, all of them conscious of the fact that she needed her sleep. Bomb-building was usually a quiet activity, but sometimes things went wrong, and Iggy didn't want to be the one responsible for making her lose sleep when it wasn't absolutely necessary. They all needed to be on their A-game for this.

"'Kay, Gasman my man," he said. "Let's get this on."

They took inventory first. Out of everything that they had built on Saturday, barely a quarter remained. They had enough supplies to set up a decent line of attack, but it wasn't going to be enough to raid a place as big as the School. Thank God Fang was taking the girls shopping.

They cobbled together pipe bombs from their remaining supplies, wrapping them in sheets of newspaper taken from the front desk. About halfway through the second one, Iggy stopped and folded his arms over his chest. "You're sniffling," he said to the Gasman.

"Am not."

"Yes you are, don't lie to me. What's up?"

Fabric rustled as the Gasman wiped his nose. "Jeb isn't gonna get mad at us for building bombs this big," he said. "And—and—"

"And?"

"And yesterday, when those Erasers were chasing us, and I blew that one up… his guts were everywhere. They were _everywhere_."

"Are you upset that you blew him up?" Iggy asked. Gazzy sure hadn't _sounded_ upset.

"No, I felt kind of glad that he wouldn't be able to hurt us anymore. 'Cause he was a bad guy. But his guts were everywhere, and it was my fault."

"Don't worry about it," Iggy said. "Look, if you hadn't done that, they would have gotten me. You did the right thing, and sometimes doing the right thing is really gross. Sometimes it hurts. But you have to do it anyway. Capisce?"

Nothing for a second, and then, "I'm nodding."

"'Kay. Now let's get back to building stuff, okay?"

They worked their way through the rest of their supplies in relative silence. They barely noticed when Fang and the girls showed back up with bags full of plastic casing, fertilizer, and wires.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Nudge asked. "I don't want to just sit here and do nothing, I feel like horrible."

"Do you know how to siphon gasoline?" Iggy responded. "If yes, then get a water bottle and get on it. Don't get caught."

"Alright," Nudge said, and practically sprinted out of the room.

"Is there anything I can do?" asked Angel, not three minutes later.

"Help us organize supplies," Iggy told her. "Neat piles."

Fang didn't say anything. If it weren't for his breathing and the slight rustle of fabric as he shifted his position on the bed, Iggy wouldn't have been able to tell where he was. If he had to describe it, it would be like having a blind spot, except everythingwas a blind spot. Fang was… a deaf spot. Sometimes this made planning difficult, because Fang played his cards so close to his chest and it was hard to see how he would work.

And of course, this wouldn't be a problem if Iggy weren't _blind_.

Whatever. They had more important things to worry about, and Iggy couldn't let his weakness become an inability to trust Fang.

The morning dragged on, slowly turning into afternoon, as explosive after explosive was assembled and packed up. By two, they had thoroughly exhausted all the available supplies, filled up three backpacks, and even built a fertilizer bomb. The last one might have made Iggy proud, because he had been planning on it for a few months. But right now, it didn't matter. Even if the bomb worked, it wouldn't matter. The bombs were inconsequential and supplementary at best.

The School would have guns, and rounds and rounds of ammunition. A few homemade bombs wouldn't be able to stop squads of Erasers, who could outnumber and outfight them. God knows it was barely enough to stop a group of _seven_ Erasers. They were going to lose. And once they did, they were good as dead. Ari was as good as dead.

Iggy clenched his jaw and stood, heading for the door. He had to fumble to get it open, which didn't help any, but at least he had the satisfaction of slamming it shut behind him.

"Where are you going?" Nudge called out after him. He didn't answer.

He had mostly memorized the way to the front door from when they had all came in earlier in the morning, and was spared the indignity of having to ask for somebody to open the door for him. Jesus, what kind of a mutant was he? He had wingsbut if somebody put him in a strange town, he'd starve to death.

And now with Jeb gone and the E-shaped house unsafe, every town would be a strange one. He'd have to rely on Max to keep an eye out for him, and God knew that wouldn't go over well. She'd ditch him at the first opportunity—she already had.

Not that ditching him would be the wrong thing to do. He could barely help, crippled as he was. He had needed Gazzy to save his life—what good was he if he couldn't keep his younger siblings safe? In a rescue mission he'd be the first captured. All he had was slightly sharper senses than the others, and even then he hadn't been able to tell that Erasers were coming until Angel had pointed it out.

He stopped walking; made himself breathe in, breathe out. The facts were these: it was sunny, with the oppressive heat of mid-to-late summer. The streets were quiet and relatively free of cars. Some kids were playing basketball down the block. His muscles were cramped from sitting on the badly carpeted floor for hours, there was a crick in his neck, and he was hungry. Probably the others were hungry, too.

These things were manageable.

Iggy rubbed the back of his neck as he set off down the street, following his nose. There was barely any wind, so smells carried easily, and he had the sharpest senses of any member of the Flock. Even so, it took him some time before he stumbled upon the smell of pizza coming from (judging from the sounds of shopping carts squeaking and clanging, of plastic bags rustling, and of little children whining) a grocery store.

He stood at the end of the block, deliberating. To pay or not to pay? Max had spent a fair chunk of the money they had on gas, and then Fang had taken Angel and Nudge bomb-shopping. They'd be likely to spend even more when they had Ari. Stealing would be better for the long-term, but—how did you steal a pizza, anyway? Out of the garbage?

Jesus, he was awful at this. He probably looked like an idiot, too.

"Iggy?"

"Nudge?" He turned to face her, and stumbled backward when she launched herself at him, hugging him tightly.

"Oh my god don't _do_ that again, Iggy, I was like so worried, you've been gone for an hour, oh my god what if you died? What if you got caught? Max would _kill_ us, and we'd be living off of canned food, not to say that you're only good for cooking because you're not only good for cooking you're also really good at other stuff too, oh my god please don't leave us…" She buried her face in his chest and the rest of her words were muffled and caught up in sobs.

"Oh, Jesus." Iggy smoothed her hair down. He really had picked the worst time to have a mental breakdown, didn't he? With Ari kidnapped and Jeb gone, and Max out for the count, and Nudge… well, Nudge being Nudge, that was to say, generally bright but overemotional. "I'm not going anywhere, Nudge. I just needed a walk."

"Is it because of, you know, because Jeb's dead?"

Hearing those last two words felt like ripping off a scab—painful, but relieving. "No," Iggy said slowly. "I think it's not that I miss him so much as… we're never going to be able to go back home again. And he was a part of that home."

Nudge's head moved against his chest—was she nodding? "Yeah," she said after a while. "I feel kinda weird, like, once we get Ari it's going to be over, and we're just going to wake up inside the E-house and I'll have to water the stupid friggin' tomato plants, and the _zucchinis_ , oh my God, they're such a pain. But that's not what's gonna happen." She sniffled again. "And I just want to go home. I don't want to get shot at. I don't want to die. I don't want to be a wimp, you know? But this is scary. Those guns were for real both times. And there are going to be more guns, and I don't want to get shot because the wound gets infected and your arm rots off and you have to cut it off, but what if my wing rots off and I can't fly anymore?"

"I'll make sure that won't happen," Iggy said. "I'll boil your wing. That's what you're supposed to do—you put boiling water on it and it clears out the bugs."

"Bugs? In a gunshot wound? _Blech_. Do they put the bugs into the bullet?"

Iggy thought about the only bugs that he had seen—spiders—crawling around a gunshot wound, and to Jeb's first-aid lessons. "I don't remember. I'm pretty sure it started with a _b_."

"But we put boiling water on my wing," Nudge said, her voice only slightly shaky. "And it hurts a lot but I don't lose any limbs. And then we keep moving, and we keep moving, and we keep moving, and we stay together, and we stay alive, and we don't get caught." She exhaled. "Okay."

"You want to help score us some pizza?"

Nudge let him go and sniffed at the air. "Pizza?"

"There's a pizzeria inside the grocery store," he told her.

She squealed and hugged him again. "Oh my god Iggy _thanks._ I was so hungry but I didn't want to eat any of the canned foods because once I ate them I'd just be like more hungry in five minutes, why is that, it's really annoying, but now you're getting pizza and we can stuff our faces! And Gazzy and Angel were getting kinda hungry too, but not as much because they're kids, and Fang is probably hungry but he like barely talks so it's not like he'd say anything, also Max, do you think she even gets hungry, she's so tough, and I was so worried that you had left but now we're getting pizza!"

"Yeah," Iggy said. "Come on, we're going to dumpster-dive. They might have thrown out some pies by now."

As they headed around the back of the building, Iggy made sure to stay close to Nudge. Who knew how close together the buildings were? There was no need for him to eat bricks. He nearly ended up doing just that when he tripped over something small and round, about the size of a fist, but he caught himself.

When Nudge stopped walking and whistled, long and low, Iggy grinned. "I'm guessing that we just discovered Pizza Mountain." Although everything smelled like garbage, there was a strong smell of pizza. Like pizza pies with garbage as a topping, if that was a thing.

"Oh. My. God," Nudge said. "If you tied all these pizzas together and launched them into space, they would be like… a pizza asteroid. A pizza asteroid that would destroy the planet and usher in Pizza Armegeddon, where the oceans would be replaced by seas of melted cheese. A true heaven on earth."

A grin stole across Iggy's face. "You said ass steroid."

Nudge snorted. "And I thought _I_ was supposed to be the eleven-year-old. But seriously, there's so many! And they even have the little markings on the side, oh my god they have anchovies, I'm _totally_ getting the anchovies." And then she was off, her sneakers banging against the metal of the dumpster.

Iggy headed after her, arms slightly outstretched. As soon as his hands hit the warm metal of the Dumpster, he reached up to get a grip on its lid, swung his legs to the right, and perched carefully on the edge. He reached a careful hand out towards its contents—full of cooling cardboard boxes. "Do you think it's employee training day?"

"Maybe a party cancelled," Nudge said. "Maybe _ten_ parties cancelled?"

"Maybe a group of wandering businessmen ordered but left before they could collect. Who cares, grab a couple of pies. I think we need about five. Maybe another one for the road. So you get three, I get three."

Getting the pies was easy—grab, grab, stack, grab, stack. Getting down, on the other hand, was less so. After a moment of debating how exactly to slide down without rolling his ankle, he gave up and jumped off of the Dumpster. The pizzas were probably going to end up a little messed up, but screw it.

"Hey, Iggy, do you thin—"

Iggy held up a hand. "I think I head something," he said. And he had. Three steps of heavy footsteps were getting closer. Iggy felt the hairs on the back of his neck lift. "Erasers."

Nudge let out a very small squeaking noise.

"No, no, no. Stay quiet. Maybe they won't hear us." How had they gotten here so fast? Were they following the Flock or was this the welcoming committee sent directly from the School? Did they find the others?

No, wait. The pizzas. The still-warm pizzas. It was a trap.

Shit.

His pockets were empty, and he would bet that Nudge's were too. Flying away wasn't an option because that would _definitely_ bring attention to them. So they could try to make a break for it or—

"Hello, piglets." The voices came from near the street where he and Nudge had come from. It was deep and raspy, the voice of somebody who spent most of his time screaming in victory as he ripped out the throats of his enemy with his teeth.

 _Fuck_.

"Nudge, take the pizzas and _run_!" Iggy snapped.

"Too late to run," another voice, very similar to the first, said. Then the Erasers were surrounding them.

He grit his teeth. He didn't have any grenades, and he highly doubted that Nudge would be able to fight more than one Eraser, but screw it. If he was going down, then he was going down swinging.

"You know what?" Nudge snapped. Internally Iggy groaned. "At this point I don't care if you want to kill us!" There was a soft _thump_ as she tossed the pizza boxes aside. "You're just a bunch of big bullies, and you're showing off at how much _better_ you are, like _oooh I'm soooo scared_ , but guess what, jerks? I am scared. It doesn't matter. I don't care, because, like, what are you going to do, take me back to the School? I'm already going there. Bring it on." And then there was the soft scraping sound of wood on brick. "And guess what, losers? I have _this_."

"A baseball bat? Good luck with that, hot dog." One of the Erasers chuckled.

And then another one lunged at Iggy, and there was no more time for talking.

Iggy felt the charge coming. While he wasn't able to dodge it completely, he did manage to slam his knee up in the Eraser's gut and get his hands on its head. Shaking it off wasn't that difficult. He slammed its head into the brick wall once, twice. Then another one was dragging him back by his shoulder. His butt hit the ground and his head—

No. That wasn't how it was going to go. Iggy planted his hands on the ground and kicked his legs up, swinging them around the Eraser's neck. He was sitting on the Eraser's shoulders like the world's biggest little kid in a really weird game of piggyback.

Sometimes he really missed being able to see, because he would have _killed_ for a Polaroid of this. He groped around the Eraser's face for a second, almost got the tip of his index finger bitten off, and then shoved his thumbs into its eyes. It felt like warm Jello.

The Eraser roared in agony, and fell to its knees. Iggy grabbed it by the hair with one hand and put his other under its chin.

Its neck broke with a snap and it crumpled to the ground.

Iggy pulled himself off of its body and turned toward the sound of Nudge battering wolf monsters. She was holding her ground. There was blood heavy in the air, but she wasn't whimpering or stumbling.

Pride surged, and Iggy grinned. Nudge had always been a weaker fighter, and it was heartening to know that she could rise to the occasion. But still, an eleven-year-old against two Erasers wasn't a good situation.

"Hey, send the outfield some love!" he called.

"Gotcha!"

Iggy dropped into a crouch and waited for a half-second. One of the Erasers stumbled his way. He grabbed it, yanked it down to the ground with his forearm against its neck, and kicked it in the head. It groaned and tried to get up, so he stomped on what was probably its face, judging from the amount of bone crunching under his boot and the way that the screaming stopped.

There was a groan, a _thud_ , a cracking sound, and the last Eraser hit the ground. Nudge whistled. "Wow," she said, panting. "That's a lot of blood. Hey, Ig, they're all down now."

Iggy sighed. "Thank God. Okay, _now_ we get the pizzas and go. We pray that the Flock hasn't left or gotten killed. And that those three were the only ones."

Nudge picked up her pizza boxes and headed off. Iggy followed the soft sound of her sneakers on the concrete, trying not to bump into her.

"Where did you get the baseball bat?" he asked her.

She laughed before answering. "Some kid left it there. You tripped over the baseball, and there was a bat and a glove."

Iggy nodded, and they kept going.

"Um, Iggy?" she said as they headed down the street. "Is it, like, normal for people to walk around covered in blood? Because nobody did it on TV. Wait, whoops, sorry Iggy sorry so sorry. But it's just that people are giving us funny looks? Do you think we're going to get arrested? For being delinquents? Because I saw _that_ on the news sometimes, and remember Jeb gave you that long lecture, but there weren't any guys that looked like you being arrested, and I don't mean like tall mutants either… Like they were black? And they weren't just guys? So is it illegal to be a black delinquent? Iggy, am I gonna get arrested? Oh God I don't want to get cooped up in a cell…"

"Nudge, you beat up three Erasers with a baseball bat," Iggy said. "You can handle a few police officers. Most of them don't do anything other than eat donuts. If you hit them in the gut, it would probably be a donut piñata."

"How would you know what they do?" Nudge asked, her voice at a higher pitch than usual. "Did you ever get arrested?"

"No, but Ari and Gazzy watch cop shows sometimes, and they told me."

"But cop shows aren't _real_ , but oh look it doesn't matter because we're back at the motel anyway. That was fortuitous!"

Whatever _that_ meant.

If anybody at the motel had noticed them, they didn't say anything, and they were able to get to the room without any major confrontation.

When Nudge swung the room door open, the smell of steam and shampoo was the first thing he noticed. The second was the sound of a bad television turned to a cartoon channel. That combined with Max, Angel, and Gazzy's voices mingling—it sounded like a nice Saturday morning. Only it was Monday, probably. Right? Or Tuesday? No, wait… Monday. It was Monday. It sounded like a nice lazy Mondaymorning.

Except Ari was kidnapped, Jeb was dead, they were on the run from mad scientists and the mad scientists' pet wolfmen, he was almost completely ineffective at fighting said wolfmen thanks to the aforementioned mad scientists' experimentations on him, and his thumbs were covered in wolfman eye goo.

"Guys, we have to go and we have to go _now_ ," Iggy said.

"What happened to you?" Max asked. "Erasers? Or just kids?"

"Erasers."

She swore, vehemently and at length. Iggy raised an eyebrow. That was… pretty impressive. Not as good as some of the tirades that he had went on, but still up there.

"Fine," she snarled. "Let's get this show on the road. We have the firepower, we have the manpower, we have… is that a baseball bat? Okay. We have a baseball bat. Let's burn those murdering fucks to the _ground_."

The bedsprings squeaked and fabric rustled as she lifted her bag off of the bed and slung it over her shoulder, and then her combat boots thudded on the ground past him. Fang followed her, and then Gazzy and Angel followed behind them.

"Bombs packed?" Iggy asked.

A pause, and then, "We're nodding, Iggy," Angel said.

"'Kay. Let's go, then."

He headed out behind them, following them as best as he could. It was a relatively short walk from the motel to the car, thank God. Nothing would have sucked more than having to wander through unfamiliar streets, looking for a car, while Erasers tracked them.

He stumbled over the sidewalk curb when he was getting into the car and nearly dropped the pizza boxes. "Fuck!" he hissed. His left big toe had been an inch away from breaking again.

"Iggy!" Max snapped. "Language!"

"Yes, _mother_ ," he replied.

"Max is glaring at you," Nudge told him. "Damn, I'm surprised that your skin isn't burning. That looks pretty intense."

"Nudge, _language_."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, like you didn't just say _worse_ five minutes ago. I mean, come on, I've never said that an Eraser should go—"

Iggy decided to take advantage of the fight that was about to break out and slipped into his spot in the middle row.

"Nudge," Max said slowly, "just because I _said_ it, doesn't mean you have to repeat it. Now shut up and get into the car before I duct-tape you to the roof."

Grumbling, Nudge complied. She slid into the seat next to Iggy, running commentary at the ready. "—thinks she's soooo much better, like, what, no, you're like three years older than me, I don't care, you're not," she sniffed slightly, kept going, "you're not Jeb, literally who cares."

"Hey," Iggy said quietly. "Look, I know it's rough. And we're all kind of on edge. Me especially. But we have to shut up and suck it up, okay? Max is going to be the one who gets us to stick together. She's the one spearheading this operation now. We have to trust her, even if we don't like what she says sometimes."

Nudge snorted. "She's a butt. And an a-hole."

"True, but we all kind of are. Remember that time when you decided not to talk to me for a week because we once wore a shirt that was the same color? Did you expect me to, like, _feel_ the color? With my hands?"

"That was _six months ago_ , God. I'm a totally different person now."

Max started up the car and they scrambled for their seatbelts, the conversation discontinued. But Nudge's hand crept across the pleather seat cover and tapped his twice before drawing out a smiley face.

Pizza was passed out, the radio was turned on, and Fang began to give directions. Iggy rested his head against the glass of the window.

Maybe if they found Ari, if they got him out safely, maybe then… things could go back to normal. Max wouldn't be this snappy, Nudge would calm down, Gazzy and Angel would level out and lose some of their nervous energy.

But even if they did, and even if everybody turned out fine, they would be seven kids on the run, four of them under the age of twelve, and one of them crippled. And while he could try and try to make up for how he weighed them down, he was still a liability.

How disgusting.

* * *

 _Procrastination plus school mean that I'm only five or six chapters "ahead" of you guys, which I'll rectify as quickly as possible. So a_ _t the moment, this is the last Iggy POV chapter. Personally I enjoy writing them, but I'm also happy with leaving it at three POV chapters. Basically it's up to you guys. What do you want?_

 _(Also, today's my 18th birthday!)_


	22. Changing Minds

_Thanks to everybody who reviewed in-between updates: pinfeather, Commando2341, cfishey (_ _I understand what you mean and_ _I will definitely work to make future chapters more focused! TYSM for the advice), and Pure Hazard._

* * *

There were voices out in the dark distance. He couldn't recognize them, or pick out any words, and it was a struggle to tell how many of them there were. It sounded like two, but it could have been more. At times one of them would rise sharply in pitch, and a knife would stab into his skull.

After some time the voices blurred together and small dots began to swim in the darkness that surrounded him.

Ari tried to open his eyes. He couldn't.

 _Hey, somebody help me!_ He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn't move, and there was something like salt water in his mouth and throat. But he could breathe.

This was the worst. Where was Max? Where was the Flock? Wasn't he arguing with Wendy? And then…

Something happened. He had gotten mad. And now he was asleep, or dead, or something.

If he were dead, would the Flock know? Or would they show up anyway and get trapped? Were they even trying to show up? It had been over a day. And Amy had gotten left behind too, and she had to crawl her way back through the vents to a door that wouldn't open.

Wendy had said nothing but the truth. He was a burden and a pain, and nobody wanted him around. Maybe the Flock had always wanted him gone. Iggy and Gazzy had let him tag along, but they probably made fun of him when his back was turned. And Max was so strong and brave—no way would she want to rescue her weak, wimpy kid brother.

Maybe, if Jeb told her to—but there was no way that Jeb would tell her to. Ari came in second place to the Flock. In the real world, in Max's heart, in his own dad's eyes.

Nobody was coming for him, then. He was going to die here.

His hand twitched, and he found that he could ball it into a fist.

Slowly the blur of voices began to separate—it was two voices, both male, and an odd beeping sound. The beeping was getting more and more urgent, the sound drilling into his mind.

"Heartrate rising," one of the voices said. "He'll be conscious in a minute."

The beeping sped up again.

"Or not." This voice was relaxed, a counterpart to the tension-filled first one.

Ari felt like he was about to throw up. There was something bright beyond his closed eyelids, he had salt water in his lungs, there was stuff on his face and and something on his _back_ , and…

There was something wrong with him.

He gulped for air but came up with another mouthful of salt water.

"Start aerating the feed," the first voice snapped. "Give him more sed."

Another needle went into his arm, and the voices began to blur again. The beeping faded into a long, high whine, and the dots swimming in the darkness became smaller and smaller, fading out of sight.

When he came to, later, there was no water in his lungs. There was still something covering his mouth, but it was pumping in air now.

Ari took a deep, shuddering breath.

About halfway through inhaling, he realized that something was wrong. He could feel his lungs expanding, but also—his stomach? His stomach was expanding? There was more space for the air to go.

Slowly he opened his eyes. A brownish, fleshy blob hovered above him, backlit by blindingly bright lights. "Oh, you're up."

It was Dr. Howard. Ari flinched, but his fists clenched.

And there it was. There it was again. Something was wrong.

"Morning, kiddo. Feelin' alright?" He eased the mask off.

"My head hurts," Ari rasped. As an afterthought, he added, "And my throat." And his voice sounded deeper, and all of his muscles ached, but something else had changed too. He wasn't afraid.

The School was full of Erasers and whitecoats, and he wouldn't be able to find his way back home even if he did make a mad dash for the door. Max and the Flock might not even be on their way. But that didn't matter.

It was a strange calm. Ari would have wasted time puzzling it, but there were more important things. "What happened?" he asked Howard.

Howard shrugged. "What do you think?" He gestured towards the back of the room. "There's a mirror."

Ari sat up and looked at his legs, covered in black plastic-like fabric. He held his hands out. The nails were longer, duller, and came to vicious points. His thumb was aligned differently—the bone looked like it had rotated in the socket, to the point where holding a pencil would be harder.

It was a hand that wasn't human. A hand that looked more like a paw.

No. No no no no no. Dear God, no. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. This was just a bad dream, and he would wake up and go play checkers with Max, this was just a bad dream and if he blinked enough it would go away.

Maybe. Maybe if he went to the mirror, like Dr. Howard had said, he would wake up.

The mirror itself was a slab shoved haphazardly into a corner, next to a framed poster about lab safety. Ari stared at himself for a moment, horrified, and then shut his eyes again.

He was still different—about a foot taller, and obviously older. If he had to guess his age, he would say between Iggy and Nudge. He was still lanky, but muscle had begun to form. He opened his mouth to speak, and saw that his teeth were more pointed, the canines longer.

"What happened to me?" He croaked. It felt like he had burned his lungs, burned whatever else was holding air in his body.

Unless—no. No way. Nuh-uh, nugatory, nope, nein. Ari shifted his weight from one foot to the other and felt the mass on his back shift, feathers sliding against skin.

He had wings.

It felt like having another set of arms. He twitched one and found that he could move them—could extend them and draw them back in, could spread what felt like fingers inside the wing itself. There were muscles that ached from disuse and feathers that he could, with great care, spread like they were a secondary set of fingers.

This was all he had ever wanted, so why did he feel like he was about to throw up?

 _Focus on your immediate situation_. Jeb's voice spoke from out of his memories. _Crying isn't going to get you anywhere_.

Okay. He was wearing clothing that he had never seen before, he was in a room that he had never seen before, he had been kidnapped by Erasers and brought to a mad science laboratory, he had apparently aged about seven years, his face and teeth and hands were _wrong_ , and he had wings.

 _You're not stupid. Put it together._

Ari inhaled, exhaled. The facts were clear and simple. They were laid out and easy to connect. But he _couldn't_. Because that would mean that he—

That would mean that he—

"What happened to me?" he repeated.

Howard grinned. "You ain't blind, kid. What d'ya think happened?"

Ari swallowed. "You made me an Eraser," he said. The words came out of their own volition and then hung, heavy and horrifying, in the too-still air. An _Eraser_. The thing that murdered mutants. The ones who kidnapped him were Erasers, and _Robert_ was an Eraser…

The rest of it spilled out. "You made me an Eraser and you gave me wings and now you're gonna lock me up in a cage and poke me with needles, or you're gonna make me hurt otherkids and I don't want to do that! I don't want to hurt anybody, ever, I just want to go home!" The last words came out shrill, and it was only by a supreme force of will that he was able to force back tears.

He glared at Dr. Howard, who was holding up his hands. The older man spoke slowly. "Now first of all, _yes_ we did modify you. That's that." He grinned at Ari, wide and friendly. Like Jeb never had.

There was a moment of silence as Ari mulled this over. This was real. He was strong, strong enough to keep up with the Flock, strong enough to make Jeb proud… strong enough to break Dr. Howard's neck, run out, and fly away. He didn't _have_ to do what anybody told him to.

Especially because… "Max is coming to get me," he told Dr. Howard. "Max and the Flock are getting me the heck out of here. So that was a really stupid thing you did." Maybe if he talked enough, the horrible nagging fear in the back of his mind would go away.

Dr. Howard snorted. "You know how fast they can fly?"

Of course he did. Jeb talked about it all the time. "Angel can do forty miles an hour, sprinting. Gazzy's faster—I think fifty-seven? And Nudge and Max and Fang and Iggy can go at up to ninety."

"Right. And how far are we from your little place in Colorado?"

Ari felt himself shrinking when he heard the condescension in Dr. Howard's voice. This wasn't the tone of somebody who was wrong. Jeb sounded like this.

"I… don't know," he confessed.

"'Bout six hundred miles." Dr. Howard shrugged. "Let's be honest—your friends wouldn't send kids to rescue a kid. So they're going at ninety, which means that it would take them, what, seven hours?" He snorted. "It's been _two days_. Face it, they ditched you."

It hit Ari like a punch to the stomach. He had been right, all the times that he had thought he was too slow or too weak to keep up. The Flock _had_ hated him. They were _glad_ he was gone. He felt his eyes burn as tears welled up, and he blinked them away. He was strong now. People who were strong didn't cry.

And he wasn't a _person_ any more, not really. He was—what was he? He was an Eraser, but Erasers didn't have wings.

"Okay," Ari said slowly. "What did you do?"

"As you can already tell, we grafted your DNA with that of a bird. And of a wolf."

Ari frowned at that. "I'm not stupid. I'm not smart like Angel or Nudge or Iggy, but I'm not a complete idiot. So you can tell me what bird and what wolf you grafted me with." His hands, clenched into fists and his nails bit into his palm, drawing blood. It hurt, but in an odd way—a good way, a sharp way.

Dr. Howard snorted. "How about no?" he replied, his tone sharp. "You're being rude enough as is. I think you need to remember that _we_ did _you_ a favor. If you behave, then you'll get information on a need-to-know basis. If not, then," he shrugged, slow and easy. "You've seen the cages. I mean, I didn't want to put you in one, but."

Ari shuddered but caught himself. "Sorry," he muttered. "What do you want me to do?"

"Well, we modified you to make you better," Howard told him. "Faster, stronger, quicker in the air. You're one of the toughest mutants out there now, but now what we need to do is train you up. And that's what we're going to do, starting now."

"Okay," Ari said. This wouldn't be much worse than the E-shaped house then, would it?

It might even be better. Back then he had to trail around the Flock, and he lost more fights than he could remember. Now, he was stronger. Faster. He could keep up with anybody now—even Amy. Maybe he'd be faster than her, because she was still tiny. Speaking of Amy, what if they found out about what happened to Robert? Would he get in trouble? Did they do this to him because he was in trouble? No, that didn't make sense—he was better now. You didn't make people _better_ if they were in trouble. So if anybody was in trouble, it might be Amy.

"Is Amy okay?" he asked Dr. Howard, a pit forming in his stomach.

He didn't need to saythat he had put Robert in that tank. Nobody needed to know. But he didn't want Amy to get in trouble for it, either.

Dr. Howard shrugged. "Need-to-know, remember?"

Ari's shoulders slumped. "Yessir. Sorry sir." When Dr. Howard didn't snap about _you already knew the rules, why did you try to test them_ , Ari looked up. "What are you training me for?"

"Kid," Dr. Howard said. "You're going to save the world."

"Isn't that the Flock's job?" Ari asked. "I mean, that's what Jeb says all the time…" He trailed off, hating himself as soon as the words had left his mouth. How stupid of him, to talk about the Flock to this guy. To a bad guy.

"See, that's your problem," Dr. Howard said. "You gotta stop thinkin' that you're not as good as the Flock—'cause now you are. In fact, you're better."

Better.

Ari didn't know what to say. Being able to keep up with the Flock was one thing—but being _better_ than them? It was like seeing a new color for the first time.

"In fact," Dr. Howard continued, "You'd probably—after some training—be able to beat them in a fight. Get back at them for ditching you."

Did he want to _get back_ at the Flock?

They were family, weren't they? Didn't you have to stick with your family? Did the rules change when your family left you? If he went back now, now that he was strong and tough, would they kick him out for being an Eraser? Or would they like him more because he had wings?

He settled for asking the easiest question. Starting small. "You want to train me?"

"Yeah, why not? Higher-ups want me to go to Canada to supervise, but seeing as I'm the head of lupine hybrids and you're our most improved hybrid yet, I think that you're more important than that."

Ari bit back the _You think I'm important? You think I can save the world?_ Instead he nodded. "Alright, let's start."

Maybe—just maybe—Dr. Howard was wrong. Maybe the Flock _was_ coming to get him. Maybe they had just been hurt really bad, and getting better had taken them a while. So they were late, but that was okay. He would train and get better, and when they came to get him he'd be stronger and faster. And maybe if he worked with Dr. Howard, he'd find out where Amy was and go see her. And when the Flock came she could leave with them. And then the eight of them could save the world together.

 _Maybe everything would be alright_ , Ari thought, trying to ignore every fiber of the body that was telling him otherwise.

Dr. Howard's phone buzzed, and he pulled it out of his shorts pocket, cradling it between his shoulder and his ear. "Si-man the man here, what's up?" When whoever it was answered, his tone changed from joking to exasperated. "…Well, Jesus, what did you expect? I told you to wait for…" He trailed off, glancing at Ari. "Huh. 'Kay, got it, I'll let Garcia know." He terminated the call, dropping the phone back into his pocket.

"Change of plans, kiddo," he said abruptly. "We're gonna need to put you in a coma."

"What?!" Ari had heard about comas. Sometimes characters in Nudge's books went into them. They were when you slept a lot, and then sometimes you died, but in general people sat by your bed and read _Lord of the Rings_ to you. And cried, if they liked you and were going to ask you out to the movies before you got put into one. But even more importantly—if he was asleep or dead or whatever, he wouldn't be able to help the Flock! What if they showed up and he wasn't able to fly away with them? "But I—"

Dr. Howard waved his hand. "No buts. The guy on the phone said that it was critical to monitor your health. Y'know, to see how you're doing now that like a good quarter of your body is completely different and you've more or less doubled in age." He shrugged. "And to tell Garcia that you wouldn't be able to save the world if you were half-way to dropping dead with some critical condition that we didn't know anything about."

Ari hesitated. "Well… you're not going to put me back in the tanks, right?"

"How did you know about the tanks? You were out like a light." Dr. Howard sounded slightly amused.

Ari froze, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. He gulped for words, words that _weren't_ 'I went exploring with Amy and aged up an Eraser-kid, horribly mutating him in the process.' Nothing came.

Dr. Howard sighed. "Probably a goddamn intern was chattering about them, right? Some stupid prank they pulled?"

Ari, knowing an out when he saw one, nodded slowly.

Dr. Howard went on. "But at the same time, it's not like you'd be able to pick them out of a line-up, and it looks like you're the only person who knows anything. So maybe you should, you know, go into a coma and when you wake up it'll all have blown over."

Ari's stomach twisted. _Crud_.

Dr. Howard headed for the door, not looking over his shoulder. "C'mon, kid. We'll find you some clothes, but then it'll be time to take a nap."

Not knowing what else to do, Ari followed him.

* * *

 _I've waited 'till this chapter for this AN, despite the fact that I probably could have posted it at the end of ch21. And that's because this chapter is (slightly) more plot-relevant. But in either case, TNTS has officially surpassed TAE in terms of word count. We're probably sitting somewhere close to 80k, TAE tops out at around 75k._

 _That's not exactly what I want to talk about. Instead I want to talk about the fact that in TAE, the "rescue Angel" subplot is over and done within 37k words. (25k words if we remove the Ella subplot.) Honestly. Halfway through the book, the plot ends. Angel is rescued, the Flock escapes from the School, and Patterson's left with what's little better than a short story. So we go to NYC, and Max's Voice shows up, et cetera. And it's completely disconnected to what happened in the previous book._

 _Is the hasty wrap-up of the A-plot a result of the ridiculously short chapters? I think it might be, and if you indicate in a review that you're interested, I'll happily share my theorizing. But the point remains that TAE is, essentially, two stories for the price of one. That's not going to happen in TNTS, which will almost definitely end before it hits its 40th chapter. You're free to speculate on what pointless fluff I cut, and what I added. And you're also free to let me know in a review that you have some kind of interest in listening to me chatter about things like this._

 _Anyway. Back to the relevant information. This chapter was originally possessed of a much different kind of emotional tone, but then I realized that things had gotten a bit too rushed and that I'd have to either devote several chapters to filler or skip over a lot of emotional growth. So, coma. It's a cheap plot device, I know, and I'm sorry, but it's much better than the alternative._

 _In either case, what do you think of Ari in this chapter? His fairly complacent nature is coming around to bite him in the butt, but it's also partially why he's not mentally broken due to the revelation that he's part bird not wolf. Whoops, sorry, I mean part bird and wolf._

 _Also, speaking of Ari: some of you will probably be disappointed that I haven't turned him into a giant hulking rage monster, dependent upon painkillers for survival. To that I say: sorry. And: I have my reasons. For the first thing, when Ari was introduced in canon, it was as a threat. He had physical power that the Flock didn't. And only later were the tables turned. In TNTS, it takes about 20 chapters for Ari to be something other than a scared kid. The exploration of his limits, if any, will come after some time. Second of all, Ari's purpose in TNTS is different from that in TAE. In TAE, the reason the scientists experimented on him was to create a bigger, stronger Eraser. Here the focus is on creating a flying Eraser, with the trade-offs that that implies. Third of all, patience. We will learn more about Ari's condition as his POV chapters progress._


	23. Secrets Close to the Heart

_Supreme credit goes, as always, to Tokoloshe Monster. And thanks to everybody who reviewed in between updates: Confused fan, FaxFiction, attemptedvisions, crying into infinity, and Commando2341._

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By sunset, we had found ourselves another motel to crash in. It was about fifteen miles away from the School in a run-down town called, get this, _Needles_.

The room itself wasn't anything special, but fortunately we hadn't had to haggle to get it. The clerk, who couldn't have been more than two years older than me, was more interested in her phone than she was opposed to giving six ratty-looking kids a room with one bed.

Iggy and Gazzy had spread out their bombs across the stained carpet in a final attempt to organize them and to get us all packed.

"Angel and Gaz get the big stuff, 'cause they're in the air," Iggy muttered. "Max and Fang get mostly grenades, one pipe bomb each, Nudge and I get the heavier stuff but not too much of it…" He was drumming his fingers on his thigh as he spoke.

Nudge, sitting cross-legged on the bed, hadn't shut up since we had checked in. "Find Ari, grab Ari, get out, don't stay in any room for more than a minute, don't stay on a floor for longer than a half hour, don't split off from Iggy, don't—"

Gazzy and Angel were sitting on the bed as well, talking to each other quietly. Gazzy's face was drawn and Angel looked like she was about to cry.

Fang, being Fang, looked like a rock, but I could tell by the set of his shoulders and jaw that he was on edge. They all were. They needed somebody to snap them out of their collective funk and get them back on track, which is where I came in. I'm the leader for a reason.

"Hey, guys!" I said brightly, squashing the ball of tension that was roiling in my stomach. "I have an idea. How about instead of freaking out about the School, we look on the bright side—we're closer to Ari than ever. In a few hours we're going to be together again."

"Or we could get caught and tortured horribly before we're killed," Iggy said.

"They wouldn't kill us. They'd just run us to the ground and wait for us to die on our own." That lovely contribution came from Fang.

I rolled my eyes. "You guys need to stop focusing on the negative. Just because those things _could_ happen, it doesn't mean that they're going to. Shove the fear under the rug and keep going. That's the only way you survive."

Fang snorted and I glared. "What, do you have a better suggestion?"

"Max?" Nudge asked, stopping me from ripping him a new one. "What happens if we get split up?"

"We won't," I said, with leaderly finality. "We're going to stick to the plan, and the plan is going to work. If you entertain the possibility of failure, you're creating a universe where failure is possible." I'm pretty sure Lao Tzu had said something like that once.

She bit her lip and nodded. "But what if Gazzy and Angel—"

"They won't. We have a plan." I raised my voice, addressing everybody now. "Right, guys?"

"Right," the Gasman muttered.

"Right! And the bad guys _don't_ have a plan outside of being bad and doing bad things. They want Ari so they can experiment on him, and they can't think past that because they are psycho mad scientists. Right, Fang?"

Fang nodded.

"See," I continued, "If they had long-term plans for us, then would they have blinded Iggy? Nope. These guys can't plan. We can. We're like those robots that turn out to be smarter than their creators. Except for not being robots."

"Max, about the plan…" Nudge twisted the blanket as she spoke. "Do you remember how Jeb got us out? Like, exactly?"

"He had a van," I said. "And he loaded us all into the back of it, and he drove off. I think we stopped once or twice… for fuel?" I tugged on a strand of hair that had freed itself from my braid, trying to remember. We had stopped at a place with a river once, and I had seen my first fish there. But that was after. "He got us first, didn't he, Fang?"

"He picked me up first," Fang said. "Then you and Iggy. Then the kids."

Iggy nodded once. "Yeah, and the smaller kids were kept separate. Like, on a different floor. They had a TV room, too."

"Oh, yeah, the TV room. That place always smelled like puke." I wrinkled my nose, remembering. "And worse." As a general rule, mutants were super-scrubbed every day, sometimes multiple times per day. That didn't stop them from bleeding, snotting, and peeing all over. Once a kid had thrown up blood and what was probably part of his stomach.

Nudge's forehead creased. "So what you're saying is that he got us out without stealing a gun and blasting through a zillion Erasers? Because that sounds weird."

"Yeah, wouldn't he have had to steal us out?" the Gasman asked. "Like we're getting Ari out?"

I shrugged. "There might have been stealing. Don't remember. It was six years ago. And besides, he was a whitecoat. We're not."

Iggy clenched his hand into a fist. "We should be out there, right now, getting him. Why are we sitting here doing nothing?"

"Because if we head out now, wings out and all, we're going to get seen. Local newspapers, big TV stations, and then suddenly the FBI gets called in," I said. "The last thing we need is _another_ group tracking us, ready to lock us up in cages and poke us with needles."

Fang tapped my arm, and I cut my eyes over to him. He leaned in to speak quietly. "We should scout first."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," I agreed. "So let's do that right now. It's already dark enough, so the two of us can head off without being seen."

"Hey, waita second," Gazzy said. "The two of you? So you're going to ditch us again?"

"Yeah," Nudge added. "That's not fair. We can scout, too. And you _said_ we weren't going to split up." She stared at me, combining a glare with her Bambi eyes, and I stared back.

"Tough luck," I said. "Guys, I'm the leader now. I need you to trust me. If I say stay, you stay. If I say jump, you don't say _how high_ , you jump. You need to trust that I'm saying this, doing this, to keep you _out_ of those cages. Got it?"

Nudge nodded, scowling.

Iggy nodded, and spoke. "It makes sense for you two to go off. The rest of us haven't gotten much sleep—dozing off in the car wasn't the best way to rest. And I'll need to check bandages and make sure that we're all in working order by the time tomorrow rolls around." His sightless eyes focused on an area about a foot away from my shoulder. "Just be back fast. Don't get too close, they might have tripwires."

Fang nodded and stood, and the two of us headed out. We did a quick U & A in the parking lot, leaping into the night sky. My shoulder and wing screamed in protest, but I was able to dry-swallow two painkillers while hovering.

Flying to the School took about ten minutes, and it would have taken less if we had known exactly where to go. Dark as it was, we had to work to make out the building. One of the downsides of raptor vision is that it doesn't work too well at night.

But once we got close enough, it was unmissable. It was on top of a hill, its fiberglass walls gleaming dimly in the moonlight. Trees surrounded it—they had probably been planted. The other foliage in the area was smaller and much more sparsely spread out.

The trees were a poor attempt at camo, but they gave us a good place to land. We aimed for one that was close to a track. An actual track, like the kind that real schools had outside. I snorted. It was surreal.

"Do you think we can get closer?" I whispered to Fang. "Or sneak around?"

Before he could answer, a scream pierced the night. It was high and unbroken, more animal than human, and it went on for what felt like hours. It was accompanied by the faint rust-and-salt stink of blood, and a series of growls.

Oh, God. The Yard.

Fang and I both tensed up, muscles coiled and ready to get in the air _now now now_.

But I paused for a split second. Whoever was out there, they didn't deserve to die. They were a kid, just like us. They were scared and alone, and they didn't deserve to die.

I half-stood and readied myself to jump off of the branch. I could get to them in five seconds, but the Erasers were a problem. How many were there? How many could I fight off? Could I just grab the mutant and get in the air?

Fang shot out a hand and grabbed my arm, pulling me down so we were face-to-face, uncomfortably close. "What are you doing, stupid?" he hissed. "Do you _want_ to end up in a cage?"

I shook my arm free. "Don't you touch me like that," I snarled back. "I'm trying to save that kid's life, you asshole!"

"Kid's dead by now," Fang said. "And you can't charge in headfirst every time somebody gets hurt." He took a deep breath. "You have us to think about now. You have to put us first, and you're no good to us if you're locked in a cage. You can't save everybody, Max."

I stiffened, and we sat in silence for a moment. The screaming had died down, replaced by more animal sounds—grunting and teeth ripping into meat. The sounds of my nightmares.

"That kid is dead, Fang, and we're just _sitting_ here!" I half-stood, and Fang grabbed my arm again.

"Do you want to end up like that?" he hissed. "Do you want _me_ to end up like that? Or Nudge, or Angel?"

He stood and used his grip on my arm to push me up against the tree trunk. Leaning in so close that our noses almost touched, he said, "I am _never_ letting that happen. I'd die before I end up in there."

I wanted to yank my arm free, but I couldn't. And if I fought my way out of his hold, we'd make enough noise to get noticed. So my only option was to listen to what he had to say.

He made sense, which was the worst part. It meant that I had to do something that I didn't like to do—apologize.

"I'm sorry," I said, bumping our foreheads together. "I got mad." Deep breath in, and then the hardest three words to say. "You were right."

He nodded once, his eyes dark and intent, and he released his vise-like grip on my arm. But he didn't back off. "Max," he said quietly, "There's something I want to show you. Something I want to tell you."

I blinked at him. This was new. Before I could ask what, exactly, _something_ was, he had started moving, pulling off his sweatshirt.

After the sweatshirt, his three layers of shirts came off, and guess who had to hold all of this? Yeah, that's right. Me.

"What is this?" I whispered.

Fang didn't say anything, but instead pulled a penlight out of his jeans pocket and shone it on his chest.

The claw marks from Saturday were just about completely gone, but, like me, he had retained almost all of his childhood scars. Back then, the constant malnourishment and regular exposure to danger had really done a number on our healing capabilities. There was a patch of mottled skin just above a hipbone—acid. I had a similar one just over my tailbone. And the clawmarks that licked at the left side of his ribcage weren't anything new. He had gotten on an Eraser's bad side, had been too slow to get out of the way. My arms and legs had more scars like that than I cared to count, each one of them leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. Each one of them a reminder of a failure, of how close I'd come to death because of some rat-faced assholes in lab coats.

We even had matching scars on our shoulders, from when we tried to wriggle out of the claws of the Erasers who shaved us bald every few weeks.

And like me, his torso was mostly lean muscle. We're thin and compact, not emaciated. If anything, I was bulkier than Fang—we both stood at about one-forty, but he was two inches taller than me. Which would explain why, nine times out of ten, I could beat him in push-up contests.

But there was one major difference. I didn't have _words_ carved right over my heart. I squinted, but tried to keep my distance. If I lost my balance, both of us would go crashing down to the ground. Fang obligingly moved the penlight.

 **SH** _UT_

 _UP_

The first two letters were neat, uniform. I had seen similar markings on the haunches of some of the lab animals. Somebody had branded their initials into Fang's chest. But the others… they were jagged, messy. Penknife work. Sloppy penknife work.

" _Jesus_ ," I said.

Yeah, a kid had just died, and that made me sick to my stomach. But Fang? Fang was family. It meant more.

"Fang, who did this to you?" Tentatively, I reached out and touched the scars. They were all old, which was a no-brainer—we hadn't been around psycho mad scientists for six years. But the penknife scars weren't as neat as the branding iron ones. Which meant… "Did you do those to yourself? The last four?"

He nodded. "But the first two… You remember when we were kids. We were in the day group. But sometimes some kids would get taken at night. By Erasers."

I nodded. "Yeah. A lot of them didn't come back after a few nights."

"I was one of the lucky ones. The guy who did this to me—he didn't kill me. Because of you." He shrugged, and pulled his shirts out of my grasp. "Because I was part of the same group as you. He said. He couldn't kill me. But he made my life a living hell."

My fingers lingered on the penknife scars. For them to have stayed this long, they had to have been old—done right after we reached the E-shaped house, most likely. I thought back to what I had been doing then, and wondered: "Why? Do that to yourself?"

Fang shifted. It wasn't much, but it was enough for me to realize that I was still touching his chest. My fingertips suddenly felt like they were on fire, and I flushed. I snatched my hand away and forced myself to focus on Fang's face.

"If I'm going to have scars on my body," he said slowly. "Going to have words on my body. I'm going to be the one who decides what they are."

My head was starting to pound. "Fang, I'm not saying that I don't appreciate this information, but what am I supposed to do with it?"

"Think about it, Max," he said, and his voice was as soft as I'd ever heard it. "He didn't kill me because I was part of the Flock. And Ari is part of the Flock, and Jeb's kid to boot."

I tensed. "Are you saying that he's _safe_ there?"

Fang shrugged. For a moment he was silent as he pulled on his clothes, but as he zipped up his windbreaker, he nodded. "Do you want to risk our collective necks over this one kid? This one kid who's basically deadweight?"

I slammed my hands against his shoulders and shoved. Whatever weird thing was going on earlier with my fingertips wasn't happening now—it was all too easy to push him away from me, and the distance was the only thing clearing my head. Fang stumbled back, almost falling off of the branch.

"Careful, stupid!" he snapped.

"I can't _believe_ you!" I shouted. Let them hear me, I didn't care. "You want me to ditch Ari, who's good as _my brother_ , just like you and Iggy and Gazzy are, because you don't want to worry about having to get him? That's the worst thing I've heard in my life!"

"Max," Fang said, low and careful, and his hands were on my forearms for the third time tonight. I snarled at him, but he didn't let go.

"Max," he repeated. " _Listen_ to me."

I pressed my lips into a hard line. "You have sixty seconds before I kick your feathery ass off of this tree. Make them count."

For a long moment he didn't say anything. I shifted my weight, getting ready to launch myself at him. But just when I had steadied into a good crouch, he started in on the longest speech I had ever heard him give. And that's saying a bit—he'd been more talkative than usual today.

"Max," he said, "I want you to think for a second. Really think. When the Erasers came here, they only took Ari. They could have shot Jeb. They knocked you out; they could have taken you, too. Jesus, they could have shot all of us. But no. They took Ari and Angel—the kids. And they didn't try too hard to get Angel back, either. Think like one of them, Max. They set up a trap for us. Like the alleyway with the pizzas that Iggy and Nudge stumbled into. Ari's our pizza. We're going to try to get him, and they're going to get _us_ —for good. But if we don't show up, they probably won't screw him up too bad. If we left him alone for a month we'd be able to come back and grab him without them expecting us."

He stopped talking, and let go of one of my arms so he could push back a strand of hair that had fallen into my face.

I was shaking, seething, and about three seconds away from kicking him in the 'nads and flying in there to get Ari.

I had been played. And that pissed me off.

"So they had a plan after all," I muttered. "Rotten lousy bastards."

"Do you see what I mean?" Fang said.

I sighed. "Yeah. I do. And the worst part is that I can't punch you in the face for it, because you're _right_. But… why didn't you bring this up in front of the Flock?"

Fang let go of my other arm and leaned our foreheads together for a moment. All of a sudden the night seemed a lot colder, and I shivered.

"Max," he said, his breath warm on my face, "I trust you. You're our leader. You're theirleader. I don't want to get in a fight with you in front of the kids."

"It _would_ suck if the kids weren't alright," I quipped, and he rolled his eyes. For a second, we could have been back at the E-shaped house, sneaking out at night to stargaze.

Except, you know, the industrial mad science laboratory was a stone's throw away, and I could still smell mutant blood.

"Max?" Fang said. "What's the plan?"

I set my jaw and readied myself for a fight. "We're going to get Ari. What they did to you sucks, and we may well be walking into a trap, but I'm not leaving one of my own behind. If this is the hill I die on, so be it."

"This isn't just you," Fang said. "This is all of us."

"Yeah. And as a leader, I am deciding for all of us."

Fang sighed but didn't protest.

We stood in silence for a moment. We were close enough that I could feel his body heat, could smell the cheap shampoo he had used this morning. If I wanted to, I could have leaned in and hugged him. I could have said _I'm sorry for what those bastards did to you_. I could have said _It's going to be alright_.

But I didn't. If I touched him, if I got even a half-inch closer, I would break down in tears. My little brother was gone, I was standing a stone's-throw away from the closest thing to Hell on Earth, and now my right-wing man was telling me about how he had been tortured. There wasn't any time for crying. The only option I had was to grit my teeth and fight on.

Emotions were never my thing. I was the leader. I had to be strong. And if that meant shoving everything under the rug, then fine. I could deal with it when Ari was safe.

So as we patrolled, keeping an eye out for any alarm-system triggers, I kept my mouth shut. He did, too. We spent two hours a hands-breadth away from each other but didn't exchange more than five words.

"Let's head back," I said. "Rest up. I'm sure Iggy's come up with a completely new strategy for us to try out. Probably involving acrobatic pirouettes."

It was too dark for me to see Fang's smile, but I knew it was there.

The flight back to the motel and the rest of the night passed in uneasy silence. Nudge, the Gasman, and Angel had gotten the bed, by virtue of being the smallest, and they were tossing and turning all night long.

Fang had dozed off relatively quickly, with Iggy following suit, and the two of them were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with their backs up against the door.

I had grabbed a spare blanket and curled up underneath the window, trying and failing to nod off. My head just wouldn't stop pounding, and I felt like I was about to hurl. The air in here was too stuffy. Maybe some fresh air would do me good—but I couldn't risk it.

Suffice to say, by the time four in the morning rolled around, I was up and ready to go. Screw waiting for dawn. We were going to hit these bastards where it hurt.

"Alright," I said, shaking the kids awake. "Up and at 'em, punks. Iggy, Fang—you too."

We ate in the room and I went over what Fang and I had learned from last night.

"They have a van full of Erasers coming in every thirty minutes, and there are heavily armored guards at the front doors. There's a patrol running 'round the building, two Erasers, thirty seconds apart." I drummed my fingers on the rug, took a sip of tap water. "The only part that isn't as heavily guarded is the track area—the Erasers walk around the fence, but not around the track. That's how Iggy and Nudge are getting in. Fang and I are going for the front door."

"They got any other doors?" Iggy asked, his mouth full of red beans.

"Not that we saw. Not that we're looking for." I rolled my shoulders, trying to loosen the knots of tension that had formed overnight. "Alright. We ready to roll?"

"Ready," the Gasman said, his blue eyes hard and flinty. He looked pale, and a bit like he had been crying, but his voice was as tough as nails. I ruffled his hair.

"Ready," Nudge said, gripping the baseball bat that she had picked up yesterday.

"Ready," Angel said softly, and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze.

"Ready," Iggy said, his pack already on his shoulders.

I shot a glance at Fang, who shrugged.

"Ready," he said.

"Alright. Let's go."

We flew off in the pre-dawn darkness. Even Nudge was silent.

The School in the morning was different from the School at night. At night, the silver glow of the moonlight worked magic on the trees and dirt and rocks, making them glow silver. It made the School fit in, in a way. The sunlight didn't lie like that. It shone harsh and bright off of the white walls and reflected off of glass windows that shouldn't have been there. Contrasted with the faded greens and sandy browns of the desert, the School stuck out like a sore thumb. It felt like a punch in the gut.

I struggled to find something to say. Something leaderly and inspirational, something to pump us all up.

I couldn't find anything. "Let's do this."

The six of us swooped down and unleashed hell.

* * *

 _Hopefully the "oh my god, what the fuck" factor of this chapter will make up for its extreme lateness. I tried really hard to focus on Max and Fang's **characters** \- like, who they are as people, not "oh yeah these are Max and Fang from Maximum Ride." Although I might not like him too much in canon, I really found myself relating to Fang as I was writing this chapter, chapters 25 and 26, and I suspect I'll relate to him even more in chapter 28/29. I guess I just started doing the same thing with him that I did with the others - seeing bits of myself in him and then building on that. I mean, **I** think it makes him more sympathetic. What are your opinions on that, and on this chapter in general?_

 _And of course, the traumatic reveal. More about that in future chapters. Fun._


	24. Futility and Heroism

_Tokoloshe Monster, my beta, continues to be fantastic. And thanks to everybody who reviewed in-between updates: joan of radius, Jessica Jay Jackson, jrits, and AbsolutelyAbbie._

* * *

Fang and I split off from the group first. When we were about twenty feet from the ground, Fang chucked a grenade from his backpack, blowing in the side door. The shrapnel missed us, but the blast itself made my eardrums feel like they were about to explode. Sand swirled up as we snapped our wings in and dropped. I hit the ground running and kept my eyes and mouth shut.

We headed into the School with our fists up, and immediately trod on the mangled bodies of two Erasers. I nearly slipped on a bit of spattered blood, and half-tripped over a stunned Eraser. I did a quick count. There had been seven of them—too many for the two of us to take on in these close quarters.

In spite of the recent explosion and the stench of blood, the air was still laced with enough chemical cleaners for each breath to feel like snorting dry ice.

Alarms blared and footsteps thudded, getting closer. It did wonders for my eardrums, thank you for asking.

"Down!" I snapped. Before I ran, though, I pulled out a pipe bomb from my backpack and a lighter from my pocket.

I lit the fuse, lobbed the bomb, and dove into the staircase. Fang was right behind me.

We hit the stairs and thudded down, heading for the bottom-most floor.

We didn't hear the explosion so much as _feel_ it. It rattled the walls, sending me stumbling over my feet, smashing a wing against the wall, and slamming into Fang. We skidded down the stairs and onto a landing, removing half of the skin from our elbows in the process. Fang caught me before I could split my head open, and we stayed frozen as the world around us shook. His hands were on my shoulders, and mine on his. He was warm and solid, a comforting certainty in a hell that had the cold but intangible burn of antiseptic. When I was sure that moving my mouth wouldn't mean biting my tongue off, I grinned. He gave me a nod. And then we pulled ourselves up and kept going.

We burst out of the stairwell and split up, checking one room at a time. It wasn't that hard—the "floor" was just a hallway lined with doors, stretching from the stairwell to an elevator. The doors must have been made out of a single sheet of plywood each—a quick kick to the center was all it really took. That made checking the rooms a lot easier, which I was grateful for. Checking the rooms sucked.

What I saw wasn't anything new. Yet every time I opened the door it was like I was four again, brought into the lab area for a life full of experiments. Kids oozing pus from infected wounds. Kids oozing blood because their skin was stretched too thin over their bodies. Kids with just about every bone on display. Kids mutated so awfully that it was a miracle that they were still alive. There was an entire room of kids with freakishly elongated arms, something I hadn't seen back when I was a kid. Had the whitecoats come up with a new way to ruin lives?

I could feel righteous anger welling up in my heart when they stared at me, their eyes too big for their hungry faces. Or eye. Some of them only had the one.

I wanted to unlock their cages, lead them outside, and let them live the rest of their pathetic lives in freedom, but we didn't have the time. So I settled for just feeling awful about it while I ran through the rooms.

The blaring of the alarms was background noise by now, but the flashing lights were new. They made the pounding in my head worse, and I swore as I headed out into the hallway. Fang was waiting for me, and he shook his head once. I shook my head back at him.

"Head up!" I shouted.

The next floor was also a bust, but it was also where we met the first Erasers. There were three of them, muscular and vicious, jagged teeth bared.

I got in close to one, headbutted it. Even though that sent me reeling back, feeling like my skull was splitting, it was still kind of a win. The Eraser stumbled back half a step, claws raking across my face, and I kneed it in the groin and shoved it back into one of the rooms full of mutants. I slammed the door between us shut.

Fang had taken another one down. It lay on the floor, groaning and clutching its knee. Fang didn't pay it any attention—he was grappling with a third one.

I strode over and punched it in the head. I didn't knock it down. It outweighed me by an easy sixty pounds. But I got its attention. It swung out at me, a glancing blow that hit the side of my face. I saw stars, and the inside of my mouth was full of quicksilver pain as my teeth smashed down on my tongue and lips.

But that wasn't the only thing smashing. Fang took advantage of the Eraser's distraction and rammed into it shoulder-first. It hit the ground and I kicked it in the skull twice. Blood splattered on my boots.

My mouth was full of more blood. I spat it out. "Come on."

Third floor from the ground. Thank God, the Eraser that I had locked up didn't follow us.

We ran into Iggy and Nudge. They were fighting back-to-back, surrounded by a cluster of Erasers. Ten? Twelve?

I was moving too fast to count. I threw myself into the fray. I didn't bother to look behind me—I knew Fang would have my back.

Everything turned into a blur of elbows, fists, and teeth. One of them punched me in the stomach. I wheezed and blood sprayed out of my mouth. It took every last drop of self-control I had to not open my wings enough to catch my balance—they'd just get broken. For a second I stumbled, trying to catch my breath. Another took advantage of that and aimed a punch at my skull. It would have knocked me out if Nudge didn't yank me out of the way with one hand. She clubbed the Eraser with her baseball bat. Hard, right across the windpipe. The Eraser's eyes went wide and it staggered back, landing right on top of another one. The two of them went down together.

Nudge shrugged and shifted her stance, angling herself so I would have room to snap out a few kicks. If I needed to. If I could.

Another Eraser rushed us. Nudge dodged out of the way, letting it stumble over her foot. As it started to trip, I slammed my elbow back into the base of its skull. There was a small thud, and then it hit the ground. It knocked Nudge off balance, but I grabbed her by the forearm.

"Ari?" I yelled into her ear.

Wide-eyed, she shook her head.

That was when things started to go downhill.

An Eraser managed to sneak up behind me and pin one arm to my back. It pulled me away from Nudge. I twisted but all that did was yank my shoulder around, making me gasp in pain. The Eraser holding me was grinning, a hideous wolfy grin, and that pissed me off more than anything. I kicked out, aiming for the ankles. It stepped back before I could do any real damage, yanking my shoulder further. The joint throbbed in time with my skull, and I felt like screaming. I didn't have time for this.

So I did what the Eraser wanted. I took a step forward, made it easier to grab me. I even hunched my shoulders a little, made myself a compliant target.

It let go of my wrist so it could grab my shoulder.

That was when I rocketed up, slamming the crown of my head into its jaw. Teeth cracked and the Eraser let out a mangled scream as its jawbone broke. My skull felt like it would fracture. I almost tripped over my own feet as I tried to get away from it, tried to draw a breath.

That's when I saw Iggy hit the ground. Some canine freak had bloodied his nose and smashed his temple with a one-two.

It ripped his pack off and grabbed him by the arm, dragging him down the hallway. His legs kicked weakly, and his body twitched, but the Eraser just grunted and kept hauling. I lunged for it, but didn't even get halfway there.

Another Eraser grabbed my neck and pinned me against the wall. I kicked out, trying to get it off me, but to no avail.

Through the haze that was beginning to overtake my vision, I could see an Eraser, this one female, grab Nudge's baseball bat and slam it against her ribs. Nudge fell to her knees, gasping, and the Eraser dragged her off by her hair. When she struggled, it tossed her over its shoulder like she was a sack of potatoes.

It carried her past another pile of Erasers by the far stairwell. This one was seemingly fighting amongst themselves. Whoever was under there—escaped mutant, whitecoat caught in the brawl—was far too buried for me to see them. As I watched, Nudge—who was more of a brown blob than anything else—twisted and tried to escape, only to have a stray kick hit her square in the face.

They were hurting her.

They were hurting my _family_.

I was going to kill them all.

With a stroke of fury I pushed off the wall, bending my knees and bracing my feet against it. I snarled. I reached out. All that did was push me deeper into the chokehold. But I couldn't fall back. I couldn't, wouldn't let them win.

I could open and close my hand, could stretch so far that it felt like my shoulder was coming out of its joint. But I couldn't reach my family.

The Eraser holding me might have said something, but its words were a blur. So was everything else. All I could sense was the fog around me pulsing to my heartbeat, thrumming in my ears. Oh, God. I was going to pass out. I was going to pass out and then we would _lose_ and Ari would _die_ and we would all be captured…

I looked around frantically, trying to drag the Eraser's hands off of my throat. Fang. Fang. Where was Fang? He would help me.

And then the fog blocked out everything.

* * *

 _I love this chapter. I absolutely love all-action chapters, they're so much fun to write. There's some deadening of emotional impact (the Flock not finding Ari) but I can assure you that, as things progress, the pain train will be pulling into the station._

 _And just in the way that chapters 5/6/7 were transitionary chapters, marking the end of a "piece" of the story, this chapter is as well. Over the course of the next four chapters (give or take - still not finished writing them) things change significantly. At this point the majority of the cast is in the same place. Shit's going to go down._

 _Are you excited? I sure am!_


	25. White Walls

_Beta-read by Tokoloshe Monster. Thanks to the reviewers: jrits on anon three different times, and dicaeopolis._

* * *

" _But to surrender what you are and to live without belief is more terrible than dying—even more terrible than dying young."_

\- Joan of Arc

* * *

I slammed my foot into the thick metal door of my cell, doing my best to ignore the pain. The canvas sneakers that I had woken up in _really_ weren't made for anything useful.

Case in point: the door didn't budge.

My head chose that moment to flare up in pain, and I clutched at it, doing my best not to whimper. It wasn't as bad as it had been when I had first woken up down here, coming down off of whatever tranqulizers they had me on, but it still hurt like the dickens. I had already thrown up once into the steel toilet affixed to the wall.

Toilet, sink, mattress, shuttered door. They were the only things in my cell. And I had tried to throw just about all of the first three at the last one, with absolutely no success.

I slammed my fist into the wall, sending shockwaves up my arm. I had splintered my nails and split my knuckles open hours ago trying to get out of here, but I hadn't made a dent in anything. The only signs that I had even _tried_ were the dark brown smears of dried blood littering the walls.

Why did I even bother? It was hopeless. I was just burning myself out. They would leave me in here to rot, and I'd never see the sun again, never fly…

These assholes had ripped my family apart and maybe killed some of them. They had locked me in a windowless prison cell and drugged me to the point where I couldn't see straight.

I was going to kill them all.

My breath hitched and I saw red. Again I slammed my fist into the wall, and again, and again…

I forced myself to stop, curled up in the corner. I couldn't cry. I couldn't break down. I had to be strong. Even though I was trapped in a windowless hell with all of my family gone, I had to be strong. I tugged my gray sweatshirt over my mouth and took deep breaths. Slowly my breathing evened out, and I was able to stand up.

They couldn't keep me in here forever. Eventually they'd need to experiment on me, and when they did I'd be ready. I could take out a whitecoat, no problem. Erasers would be harder, but I could handle two of them if I kept my back to a wall. Heck, maybe I'd be able to get a few other mutants to help out. Six years ago, I had convinced Fang and Iggy to fight like hell when the whitecoats came—I could do that again with another set of kids.

In the meantime, though, I'd need to be ready to fight. I started to stretch, taking care not to move my head too much.

The door opened before five minutes had passed, and two female Erasers strode in. Before I could move, one unholstered a cattle prod from its belt.

I glared, my hands curling into fists. I could—

I couldn't.

They were armed to the teeth and blocking the doorway, over six feet of muscle and claws. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten, and my legs were cramping up in time with the pounding in my head. My shoulders sagged.

One of the Erasers snorted. "Don't try anything funny. Hands out, palms up. Now."

Not knowing what else to do, I complied. They cuffed my hands behind my back and frog-marched me out of the room.

The hallway was just as dull as the room, lined with white-painted metal doors. Black block letters on the walls told me that this was **RHB01** , and that my cell was **RHB01.09**. Whatever that meant. I tried to look around, to see if there was any sign, however imperceptible, of a struggle—maybe the rest of the Flock was down here?—but I was dragged into the elevator at the end of the hallway before I could see anything.

Apparently **RHB01** was on floor **B7**. I frowned. Iggy had said that there were only four basement levels. And when Fang and I had taken the stairs, the fourth basement level was the lowest. What was this? Did Jeb leave the School not knowing about this place? The elevator went down to **B10** —what was on the lower floors? How deep would I have to go to find the rest of my Flock?

When we got off, it was on the second floor. But I didn't have time to be quietly relieved that I wasn't underground anymore as I was hauled through another hallway before being shoved unceremoniously into another room. This one was more furnished than the cell downstairs—it had, like, a _table_. _Chairs_. _Windows_. And a coffee machine, with bottles of water on the side to use for brewing. I licked my lips, conscious of how dry they were. How long had I been out?

I stared hard at the woman sitting at the table. She was in her mid- to late-thirties, brunette, and pale. She looked like a mom, not a mad scientist. But the super-starched white lab coat she spoke louder than her mousy hair, pasty skin, or unathletic physique. It didn't matter what she looked like—she was the enemy.

The Erasers dumped me in the chair across from her and went to stand by the door.

She stared at me.

I glared back.

She was the first one to break eye contact, turning to the Erasers. "Um, excuse me? Can we—get her hands—in front? Please?"

I didn't stop glaring as my hands were un- and re-cuffed, even as the disgustingly meaty breath of the Eraser wafted around me.

"It's nice to see you again," the mad-scientist-mom said softly.

"Feeling _not_ mutual," I snapped.

The MSM flinched and pushed her hair back behind her ear. What a weakling.

"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation," she said, and gnawed on her lip for a moment. When she spoke again, it was like she was in a play, reciting lines she had only half-memorized. "We have captured you and your family. At any moment, should we so choose, we can end their lives."

She blinked, looking nauseas. Did threatening to kill seven innocent kids make her a bit _uncomfortable_?

"I know that sounds barbaric," she went on, "but it's true. If it weren't for me, the Erasers downstairs would be the ones interrogating you. And I don't want to get _started_ on everybody who wants to experiment on you and your family. So really, your cooperation would be appreciated."

I snorted. "My _cooperation_? Let me tell you about my _cooperation_. You say that it's nice to see me _again_ —clearly you were here when I was a kid. When Fang and Iggy were kids. Remember that? How we would go out of our way to give you hell? How we would bite and kick and scream? Well, that was when we were scared little eight-year-old kids. We're fourteen now, and we're just as mean. And so are the other three. You mad scientist whack-jobs think that we're lab rats, and that if you shock us enough then we'll do what you say. Well, guess what? We're not. I'm not. I'll fight to the death if I have to. We all will. So you can take your cooperationand _shove it_."

She sighed. "What can I offer you that will help you reconsider?"

"A pony."

"How about a granola bar?" the MSM said. She reached into her lab coat and pulled one out. "Nature Valley, honey oat, still wrapped."

My stomach chose that exact moment to let out a nasty growl, and I narrowed my eyes. "Throw in some coffee and you have a deal."

"Of course," she said. "Milk and sugar?"

"Yeah."

She made the coffee and pushed it and the granola bar across the table to me. The bar was scratchy and the coffee scalding, but I made short work of both. "You just bought three minutes of cooperation, lady," I said. "Make it fast."

She smiled, like she wasn't capable of ordering those Erasers by the door to rip my throat out. Like she was a friend's mom and I had come over to hang out—like she was Ella's mom, offering me a spoonful of cookie dough. Like she wanted to be my _friend_.

I hated her.

The caffeine dulled some of my headache, and the sugar was making it easier for me to function. I straightened up in my seat. "All right," I said. "Where's the rest of my Flock? What day is it? Are they getting shoved into dog crates? Experimented on? What do you sickos want from us?"

The MSM took a deep breath in, one hand fiddling with the pen in her breast pocket. "How about _I_ ask the questions," she said. "We need for you to tell us about your childhood with Jeb Batchelder."

You know, this might sound impossible, but I had actually planned to give her three minutes of cooperation. But once she said _Jeb Batchelder_ all bets were off. Jeb had saved my life, saved all of our lives. He had kept us safe from them, kept us hidden, and made us strong enough to take them on if we needed to. He had even diedhelping Iggy, Gazzy, and Angel get away. And now this whitecoat bitch wanted me to pretend that those six years meant nothing, that a granola bar and a cup of coffee was all it took for me to sell out my family?

Rage, white-hot and pulsing, choked me. For a second, all I could think of was how satisfyingit would be to haul back and punch her right in her stupid, soft face. To hear the _snap_ of her jaw breaking, see her teeth fly across the room, and watch her blood splatter on the too-white walls. Whitecoats bled just as red as we did.

I half-stood, my hands balling into fists. It wouldn't take much. Just flip the table and—

An Eraser snapped its forearm against my throat and slammed me back into the chair, and I came back to my senses.

"Nope," I said, forcing some levity back into my voice. "Nothing doing."

She sighed. "You know, I can't help you if you don't work with me."

"You want to _help_ me?" I would have laughed if my skull weren't throbbing. "That's rich. How about you start by letting me and my family go? And then you can, I don't know, never bother us again. Oh, wait, wait! How about you _also_ give us some money and a house to live on our own, since, you know, we don't have any parents anymore! And then you can tell the Erasers to stop coming after us, and maybe you can also just _jump off a cliff and die_!" I was hysterical now. It was a show of weakness, like a rat scrabbling around in its cage. I didn't care. Adrenaline had won out over pain, at least for a moment.

"I hate to put it like this, but if you don't cooperate then you _will_ be terminated and replaced. I really don't want that to happen—please work with me." She was leaning forward on her elbows, eyes wide.

Now I did laugh. "Replaced? Who with? You think Fang will work with you? Try getting him to use more than five words in a sentence. Iggy's blind, Nudge can't do more than forty push-ups at once, and the Gasman and Angel are _kids_. Face it—if I don't work with you, your entire plan is up a creek. And I'm not doing squat."

She sighed again, and leaned back to massage her temples. I felt a small surge of vindictive joy. It was nice to know, that even after six years, I was just as much (if not more) of a pain in the collective whitecoated backside of the School.

Finally she spoke, but it wasn't to me. She fidgeted with her sleek black earpiece. "Simon, please send Erasers to collect 1A2 and 1A3, please. And… can you not back-cuff them, please? …Yes, I'm sure."

Did she just say _please_ three times? What a pushover. If it weren't for the cuffs and the Erasers, I'd be done with her in half a minute.

We sat in stony silence until the door opened and Fang was marched in. He was quiet, but the way his arms tensed told me that he was half a second away from trying to break out of his cuffs.

A moment later, Iggy was dragged in. Instead of the two-Eraser guard that Fang and I had, there were four Erasers surrounding him, one with a sparking Taser a hairs-breadth away from his neck.

Seeing the two of them under the harsh bright lights was a bittersweet thing. For one, _they were alive_. For another, they looked like crap. Fang's normally olive skin was chalky, and Iggy looked like a ghost. A blind, feral, ghost.

I tried to hug him, but the cuffs stopped me from doing that. Instead I stood and took his hands in mine, standing on my toes so I could lean our foreheads together. "Iggy, c'mon. Snap out of it."

His fists relaxed and he exhaled. "Hey, Max," he said, his voice hoarse, and snapped his fingers once. "There. I've snapped out of it."

I bumped my forehead against his collarbone, fighting against the lump in my throat.

When I stood normally, I saw that tears had begun to well up in his eyes.

Fang was next. I grabbed his hands, and he held onto mine, our knuckles going white. "I'm so sorry," I whispered, my voice breaking. And then I said the three words that I hated the most. "You were right."

He nodded once, still tense, but he didn't try to pull his hands away from mine. And for a moment, I didn't care about the Erasers, or the MSM. I just wanted to hug him and cry. Because he had opened up to me, and I had brought him back here.

An Eraser came in, holding two chairs, and set them down next to mine. Fang and I sat down and glared at the MSM while Iggy fumbled his way to his seat.

"Guys, this is Random Whitecoat Number I Don't Care, aka the Mad Scientist Mom," I said. "You probably remember her as one of the anonymous psychos who tortured us for kicks. Random Whitecoat Number I Don't Care, these are Fang and Iggy. You probably remember them as the second- and third-biggest troublemakers ever, respectively. Now that the introductions are out of the way, how about we get ready for the next load of BS that MSM is going to spew."

The MSM looked like she needed an aspirin.

"I had you two brought here," she said, very carefully, "in the hopes that you would be slightly more cooperative than your sister. That you would help her to see reason."

Fang didn't move. Iggy flipped her off with both hands.

"As you can see," I said, " _that's_ not going to work. What might work is, like, getting _all of us_ in a room together. And having the Erasers leave. And opening a window. Preferably one facing the west—I've always liked flying off into the sunset."

"Max, I'm trying to help you." Her hands were in her lap, but I was willing to bet that she had clenched them into fists by now.

"If I had a quarter for every time one of you freaks tried to _help_ ," Iggy snapped, "I'd have enough money to get my eyes fixed. Fuck you."

Fang didn't say anything, and I shot a glance in his direction. His eyes were trained on the MSM, looking at her the way he did when he was getting ready to fight somebody. Thanks to our constant sparring, I had been on the receiving end of that stare more times than I could count. It had always made me feel weird, like I was getting X-rayed. Good. Let her feel invaded. It wouldn't even be a tenth of how we felt.

"If you cooperate, we can have you moved to more comfortable quarters." She turned to Iggy and me. "You two. Wouldn't you rather have beds to sleep on? We have plenty of room in the second-level rehabilitation floor. And if we work together, then you and your family—you can all see each other again."

Iggy flipped her off again but didn't say anything. He was shaking like a leaf, biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.

"That's bullshit," I snapped. "Because my _family_ isn't just the six of us. It's Jeb, too. And Ari. And Jeb is _dead_ , and you _kidnapped_ Ari."

She paused for a moment, her eyes going wide. What, was she oh-so-surprised to learn about the horrible fucking things that the School did? "I'm sorry about—about Jeb," she said. She said _sorry_ like she was on tiptoe, and I felt my lip draw back over my teeth.

"But you can see the rest of your Flock again," she went on. "If you cooperate, you can see Ari again. Don't you want that?"

It was tempting. Almost too tempting. To be in the same room as Angel, to see Nudge's face light up, to let Iggy see the Gasman again (well, not _see_ ), to find out how Ari had been doing… It was almost everything I wanted. It _almost_ ranked higher than "not being treated like a lab rat by evil mad scientist psychos". Almost.

And besides, if they had kidnapped Ari to lure us here, then they would obviously stand to gain something from letting us see him again.

I set my jaw. My head throbbed. This lady thought she could set me up like a puppet and watch me dance. First the coffee and Jeb. Now Ari and… what? Were they going to put a pizza pie in front of me and tell me to kill a man?

Fang shifted. It wasn't much, maybe a quarter-inch of movement, but it was enough to catch my eye.

He had warned me about this last night. They had caught Ari to catch us. And now that they had us, who knew what they were trying to get us to do.

The hostile stares of the Erasers pinned me to my chair. The harsh fluorescent lights beat down on the room, their humming going straight to my already-aching head. Blood pounded in my ears. And across the table, the MSM was shifting in her seat.

She thought she had us in a corner and the only way out was the path _she_ had set down.

Yeah, well, she could kiss my feathery brown ass.

"You know what?" I snarled. My hands balled into fists, earning me a cautionary growl from an Eraser that I didn't spare a glance. "Maybe I _don't_ want to see Ari again. Maybe I _never_ want to see Ari again. Maybe I came here just to get one last swing in, just to mess with you guys. Maybe Ari being kidnapped was completely coincidental, and if it had happened last year or even a month ago, I wouldn't have done anything. So why don't you fuck off." I spat onto the table and glared at the MSM.

She flinched back in her seat, her chair squeaking against the floor.

A rush of pride washed over the aching in my skull. I was winning. I was still undeniably me. Iggy had been right about the School not being able to change how we thought, who we were. They could kidnap my brother, kill my father, stalk my Flock, beat me unconscious, drug me bad enough for my head to feel like it was about to explode, and lock me away from everybody I cared about—but I was still _me_.

I caught Fang's eye. His head twitched, and his face looked the same way it did after I had narrowly beaten him after long hours of sparring.

I gave him the smallest nod I could muster up and glanced at Iggy, who was grinding his teeth and clenching his hands into fists. "You heard her," he bit out. "Get fucked."

"I understand. Maybe later… you'll—" The MSM's voice was shaking and her chin was wobbling. She took a deep breath and turned back to the Erasers. "Please take them back to their rooms in the rehabilitation centers. Separately." When an Eraser stepped toward Fang, she held up a hand. "Why don't we see if he talks before we make any judgments?"

They took me first, using the same two Erasers as before. I threw one last glance over my shoulder. Iggy was snarling at the Erasers holding him, and Fang could have been a statue for all that he moved.

It wasn't exactly the most heartening sight, but I held onto it as I was hauled into the elevator, as I was dragged down the hallway, as I was thrown into my cell and roughly uncuffed.

I sat on the floor, holding that image in my mind. I would have liked to have something happier to think of, something with all of us. But if this grim little picture and the lingering warmth of Fang's hands in mine were all I could take away, then I would take it to my grave.

But that wouldn't be necessary. They had come for me once. They would come for me again.

I just had to wait.

I sat on the mattress, dry-eyed and still, staring fixedly at the door. I just had to… wait.

I just…

And then the throbbing in my head surged up. I curled into a ball and _screamed_ ; my hands clamped over my ears.

My brain was exploding, again and again. White-hot nebulas burst behind my eyelids only to vanish, and then they came back twisted into slightly different forms. The universe was expanding inside my mind and there was nothing I could do to stop it. After a while I wasn't sure if I was screaming anymore. I couldn't hear anything that wasn't my mind unfolding, couldn't see anything that wasn't a starburst of pain.

Finally there was a burst so intense that I blacked out.

* * *

 _This is the first of several chapters detailing the Flock (and Ari!) in the School, on somewhat even ground since the beginning of TNTS. Obviously things have changed since then! And obviously things don't align with canon - no Jeb, for one. No hawks saving the day, for another._

 _What do you think of this? Excited to see more? Can't wait for it to be over? Wondering how badly everybody's going to get hurt? Pretty confident that I won't do anything serious? Let me know in a review!_ :)


	26. White Paint

_Beta-read by Tokoloshe Monster. Thanks to reviewers in-between updates... Zara, AbsolutelyAbbie, pinfeather, and Realhastowin._

* * *

"Yeah, babe, I know, it sucks. I miss you, you know? But my boss says that even if this one stabilizes, I won't have to do paperwork. Something about source material and different funding, I dunno. Look on the bright side—he's pretty tough, and he's not dead yet. He slept through yesterday—yeah, all of it. …God, worse than _that_. It was like, fuckin' Hiroshima up in this bitch. I swear, the second I get out I'm getting hammered—H-hey, hang on, he's waking up. Gotta go. Love you!"

 _Who is that?_

 _ **Beep-beep… beep-beep… beepbeep-beep… beepbeepbeep-beep-beep…**_

 _Is that… my heartbeat?_

Ari took a slow breath and opened his eyes. He was in the same room that Dr. Howard had led him to. The sheets were still scratchy and stiff, and the ceiling was still off-white, flecked with specks of blue. But the air had changed—it tasted like the inside of a Home Depot.

Ari coughed and the annoying beeping sped up.

"How're you feeling?" This voice—the same as the one on the phone—sounded familiar, and Ari cut his eyes to its source. A twenty-something whitecoat with blond hair and square-rimmed glasses was sitting in a chair, slipping his phone into his pocket. It was Reilly, from the night in the vents—the nametag over his left breast pocket confirmed that.

It took a moment for Ari to find an answer. How _was_ he feeling?

"Like I could eat a horse," he said. It wasn't a lie, but it also wasn't the truth.

The truth was that he was covered in electrode patches and they itched, there was a needle going into his arm at the crook of his elbow and staring at it was creeping him out, his wings— _his wings_ —felt crushed up between his back and the bed like they were the filling in a sandwich that somebody was sitting on, and the incessant beeping and flickering screens of the machines surrounding him were giving him a headache.

The truth was that he was cooped up in this room, in this School, and his fingers and feathers were itching for the nearest door, the closest openable window. He didn't have to wait for the Flock; he could go to them.

"Well," Reilly said, "You can go to the cafeteria on the fifth floor when I finish unhooking you from this, alright?" He moved over to Ari and started pulling off electrodes, carefully shutting down the machines as he did so. "Try to be careful with what you eat, though—we had you on some pretty heavy tranqs, you don't want to throw anything up." He tossed a red t-shirt onto the bed, and Ari pulled it on.

He stood unsteadily, shaking his legs to get feeling back into them.

That was when he saw Nudge in the bed next to him, an oxygen mask strapped over her face. Next to her sat Angel with her white wings opened slightly. Light shone off her pale blonde hair.

And then she turned to face him, and it was like somebody had thrown a glass of ice water in his face.

It was Wendy. Not Angel. And she was looking past him like he wasn't there. Anger welled up in Ari's chest, but was beaten down when he saw tears streaking down Nudge—no, _Jane's_ —face. What had they done to her? Why was she Nudge-sized? Was she an Eraser now, too?

Ari pulled up a chair and sat next to her, and her eyes flickered over to him.

"Hey," she breathed. Ari squinted through the mask on her face and saw that her teeth hadn't changed. That was… weird. So she wasn't an Eraser. "They made you older, too?"

Ari nodded. And then she sniffled.

"What's wrong?" Ari asked, a pit of dread forming in his stomach.

"P-peter and Alex and James," Jane said. "They're… they're dead."

For a second Ari didn't know who she was talking about. And then he remembered—the bird boys. Peter had been kind of a jerk, but he had never even _known_ Alex and James. And he never could.

"I'm sorry," he said. He didn't know what else to say. "Are you okay?"

Jane sniffled, and the mask on her face hissed in response. "My lungs and my airsacs are ripped up on the inside." Her voice was rough, but Ari wasn't sure if it was because she was crying or because of what was wrong with her. "I—I might die, too."

Wendy sighed. "You're not going to die," she droned, and rolled her eyes. "Those other kids got beat up and _they_ didn't die. You're gonna be fine."

Ari froze. "Other kids?"

Wendy looked at him, and something in the back of his mind turned over. Something flashing. Something… in his hands, thrumming like a trapped bird beating its wings…

But it was fine.

"Yeah," Wendy said. "While you were out. Some kids broke in, blew up a bunch of stuff, got caught."

She kept talking—or at least her mouth kept moving—but Ari didn't hear her.

They had come for him! He had been right! And they had been _caught_ , which meant that they were still here—soon somebody would tell them about the whole saving-the-world thing and they could work together. He could see Iggy and Gazzy again, and let Max know that everything would be alright, and get Nudge to meet Jane, and Angel could read his mind and let the others know that he was still on their side…

Ari stood up, his chair clattering to the floor behind him, and headed for the door. He had to talk to Dr. Howard.

It took him _forever_ , and he got lost twice, and he tripped on the stairs and tore his jeans open, skinning his knee, but he finally got to Dr. Howard's office door. It wasn't much, but it somehow exuded confidence, like Dr. Howard was up on a mountaintop and Ari was at the bottom, with ripped jeans and bed hair and a body he still didn't quite know how to use.

Even the plaque that read _Simon Howard_ was intimidating, and Ari felt a twinge of anticipation when he knocked.

"Come in," Dr. Howard called, so Ari headed in and sat at one of the three chairs spaced out in front of the desk. Dr. Howard was sitting behind it, flipping through a car magazine. Various forms were spread out on the desk, some serving as coasters for half-empty Styrofoam cups of coffee. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and something sharp that Ari couldn't recognize. Rubbing alcohol?

Ari cleared his throat. "You told me," he hesitated, not knowing how to say this. Dr. Howard and the School had showed him that the Flock didn't care about him. They had made him stronger so he could save the world. But now… now the Flock was here. "You told me they wouldn't come to get me." His hands were in fists on his knees.

Dr. Howard just shrugged. "I'm pretty sure that they didn't."

Anger washed over Ari, and his claws dug into the meat of his palms. "Don't _lie_ to me!"

"I'm not," Dr. Howard said, seemingly unconcerned with Ari's outburst. "They came here, but, well—" He tugged open a desk drawer and thumbed through files. After a moment he pulled out a picture and tossed it onto the desk. "See for yourself."

Ari's fingers were numb as he picked up the photo.

It was Max and Fang and Nudge, eating McDonald's and laughing. Fang was rolling his eyes but Ari could see affection in every line of his face. Nudge's grin stretched from ear to ear, and her dark eyes shone like stars in the night sky. And Max was looking at the two of them like they were the answer to every question in the universe, a hand over her mouth.

Ari looked from the picture to Dr. Howard, who had a vaguely sympathetic expression. "Kid, does that look like a group of angry mutants on a rescue mission?"

"No," Ari said slowly, and his heart turned over in his chest. "But I mean, that's just a picture. I could talk to Max, maybe she was… maybe she was…" Was this what it had felt like when he was in the tank? Floating, drowning but somehow still alive, unable to get away from what was happening to him?

"Max doesn't want to talk to you," Dr. Howard said.

It was like the floor had fallen away from under Ari, and the only thing keeping him from falling to his death was the steel-hard certainty in Dr. Howard's eyes.

But Ari had to try. He had to. Max had taught him how to play checkers, had let him sleep in her room when he had a nightmare. Even if he was human at the time, and not worth being a member of her Flock… not worth her time to rescue him… they were in the same _building_ , it wasn't like she had to…

"Really?" The word tumbled out before he could stop it, and he hated it. Hated how close to tears he sounded, when he _wasn't_. He was _fine_. So what if Max didn't want to see him? And… "How do you know, anyway?"

Dr. Howard pulled out a laptop computer, opened it, and started clicking through files. Ari sat in silence as Dr. Howard mumbled to himself, to the point where the "Ah! Found it!" was as sharp as a gunshot, making Ari jump in his seat.

"So this is the audio record of Max talking to Sally," Dr. Howard said. "I don't think you've met her, have you? She works with kids."

Ari shrugged. The name might have sounded familiar at any other time, but his stomach was twisting, clenching in knots so complicated that it made him want to lose his breakfast.

Dr. Howard tapped a button, and the audio started up.

 _You can see Ari again_ , said a soft voice—a voice Ari had heard before. It was the lady scientist from the night he and Amy had crawled through the air vents. Ari struggled to keep his face calm, to not show any sign of recognition. He didn't want to talk about that, didn't want to get in trouble.

 _Don't you want that?_

 _Please_ , Ari thought, _please say yes._ It was a last-ditch prayer in the face of what he knew was going to happen.

But when Max started talking, any attempt at holding a poker face was ruined.

 _You know what? Maybe I_ don't _want to see Ari again_.

Max was almost snarling with anger, and Ari could picture her in his mind's eye—hands balled into fists, hair frizzy, face flushed, teeth bared. It made hearing her even worse. _Maybe I_ never _want to see Ari again_ , she went on, and it was worse than Robert's punches had been. To center himself, Ari stared at the picture. At Max's face. Laughing.

 _Maybe I came here just to get one last swing in, just to mess with you guys._

Ari lifted his eyes to look at Dr. Howard. Ari didn't know what was written on his face, but it was enough for the man to give him a sympathetic nod.

 _Maybe_ , each word was bitten off, launched straight into Ari's heart. _Don't cry_ , he told himself. _You can't cry._ The picture was still in his hands—Max was laughing. She had her life around her, her family in front of her…

She went on like she didn't care that she was ripping his world down. _Ari being kidnapped was completely coincidental, and if it had happened last year or even a month ago,_

 _I—_

 _Wouldn't—_

 _Have—_

 _Done—_

 _Anything._

The picture ripped in half as Ari's hands spasmed. Max on one side, Fang and Nudge on the other. He didn't know which one he crushed when he clenched his right fist.

"Turn it off." It was hard to speak with no air. His voice came out distorted, like he was hearing himself speak while underwater. "Turn it off!" Everything was blurry.

Dr. Howard didn't move.

And then Iggy spoke. _You heard her_.

Dr. Howard pressed a button, and the audio cut out.

A thousand memories hit Ari at once—Max telling him to jump out of the window in the E-shaped house and catching him before he could realize he was falling, Iggy clapping him on the back, right on his spine, avoiding wings that weren't there, Max tangled up in a rainbow of blankets, Iggy in his ridiculous green pajama pants, Max's face when she fought, determined and utterly focused, Iggy and Gazzy grinning like loons as they landed on the doorstep of the E-shaped house after a night building booby-traps in the woods, Max soaring through the canyon, wings spread wide, Iggy stretched out asleep on the floor, surrounded by popcorn kernels, after a movie night, Max and Iggy hipchecking each other as they sprinted off a cliff, laughing, Ari standing behind them—and just as quickly as they came, they left.

And Ari was alone.

Max and Iggy hated him, or they didn't care about him—he didn't know which was worse.

And it wasn't like they were constantly at odds with the younger kids, so Gazzy and Angel and Nudge… they would feel the same way too.

All those years growing up and they had been his friends, his family—had they really not cared about him at all? Was he just there because he was Jeb's kid, a burden, something that they put up with but were better off without?

The world was spinning around him like clouds in a thunderstorm, little gray dots passing in front of his eyes. His heart was hammering like it was about to burst, and his face and fingers had gone completely numb. There was ice water in his veins.

He focused, if only by fractions, on Dr. Howard. He was saying something.

"Could you," Ari asked, hoping that he was speaking out loud, "repeat that?"

Dr. Howard sighed. "Look, it's pretty obvious that your eldest sister doesn't want anything to do with you. Your blind bro, him neither. But why don't you try somebody else? How about, huh, how about that Japanese-looking kid? Doesn't talk?" He pushed a keycard across the desk.

Ari's mind floundered as he picked up the card. "Fang?"

"If that's what he calls himself," Dr. Howard said. "Ask him how his chest's doing." When Ari stared, he clarified. "He had issues as a kid."

"A-alright," Ari said, and stood. His head spun for a moment, and he had to blink to see straight. He headed for the door.

"Sixth basement floor," Dr. Howard called, and Ari nodded.

He didn't get three feet away from the door before he tripped over an outstretched foot, landing on his knees and elbows. He shot a glance around and saw Wendy, gazing down at him with nothing but disdain.

Ari scrambled to his feet. "What're _you_ doing here?"

Wendy's lip curled, and Ari realized that it didn't really matter that she was there. So what if she had followed him? That was her business. He had better stuff to do. And it made sense for her to not want anything to do with him, so he should just leave her alone.

He headed off down the hallway. By the time he reached the corner, he wasn't sure why he had tripped.

When he finally got to the elevator, it was empty, and he spent endless moments trying to think of what to say. Ideas popped up only to disappear, like bubbles rising in soda. And by the time the elevator doors opened on a pastel-blue hallway, Ari was just praying that he would be _able_ to talk. He walked out of the elevator on legs full of pins and needles.

Max and Iggy and even the entire Flock might not want anything to do with him, but Fang wasn't the kind of person to let himself be pushed over by what other people wanted. He'd been a rock for all the years Ari had known him. And it wasn't like he _liked_ Ari that much, but then again it wasn't like he liked anybody that much, except for Max and maybe Iggy.

Fang could change their minds. He'd see how Ari was better now, how he could help the Flock instead of being dead weight, how Max and Iggy didn't even have to work at rescuing him. And then the seven of them could go back to Colorado, and Jeb would be proud that Ari could help save the world…

Fang could help him. He had to.

Ari had to consciously remind himself to unclench his fists, and only then did he realize how much he was shaking. He unlocked the door at the end of the hallway, and it swung open to reveal a rec room.

The room itself was almost completely empty, with a square of sofas surrounding a table bolted to the floor. Fang was sitting on the far side of the square, his dark eyes locked on Ari.

Fang's eyes widened as Ari opened his mouth to speak. Before he could say anything, the older boy was on his feet, hands balled into fists and jaw set.

"It's not like that," Ari snapped. Bad enough that Max and Iggy hated him—now Fang, too? He wasn't going to turn against them just because he looked different, or did they all just want an excuse to turn on him? "I'm _better_ now."

Fang's mouth curled in disgust. Like Wendy's had. "You call this _better_?"

Ari unfurled his wings. "Yeah. I do." He met Fang's gaze. Did he want to fight? Ari could fight him. He wasn't just some scared little brother. "Better than you, at any rate."

"You're a buy-one get-one recombinant that's desperately trying to get on our level," Fang snapped. "The only thing you might be _better_ than is past you—and so was my breakfast this morning. How long do you think you'll last before your DNA unravels—three weeks?"

Ari glared. "At least I don't have a messed-up chest!"

Fang vaulted over the couch and landed silently, hair framing his face as he stalked toward Ari. Ari froze, knees trembling, and stared at Fang. The older boy's face was tense, and his eyes were twin pools of pure hatred.

"What," Fang said, his voice deadly calm, "did you just say?"

Ari met Fang's gaze, baring teeth for good measure. "You heard me."

Fang leaned back at that, finally giving Ari more than three inches of space to breathe in. But he didn't have time to appreciate it before Fang started talking.

"I heard you," Fang said. "Now why don't you hear me? We don't want you. We never did. You get in the way, you're a pain in my ass—Jeb should have left you behind when he took us out—"

Ari cut him off. "You're a freak—"

"—and it's too bad he didn't—"

"—and you're going to die in a cage—"

"—but I guess it evened out in the end, 'cause it's not like you're any different."

Ari froze, _if you don't work with me_ withering and dying before he could even think about opening his mouth.

"You heard me," Fang said, and took a step forward. Even with Ari grown up there was still a half-foot difference between their heights—enough for Fang to tower over him. "You're poison and you were rotting us from the inside—now your outside matches."

"Shut up!" Ari made fists. "Just shut up!"

"You want to fight? I'll fight. Just don't think that because you have wings, you're anywhere nearmy level. You're a parasite."

"I'll have a fun time watching you _rot_ ," Ari snapped.

Fang snorted. "So you don't want to fight. Why don't you just leave? It's not like you were ever a part of this Flock anyway."

The words hit Ari like a punch to the stomach. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying anything stupid. So that was how it was.

Ari's throat closed up and he couldn't speak. The world blurred as his eyes filled with tears. Fang stood silently and Ari couldn't cry in front of him.

He stormed out of the room, slamming the door between the two of them shut.

Ari headed off down the hallway, but only made it a few feet before his breath caught in his throat. He was going to cry. He couldn't cry. He took deep breaths—he couldn't ever be weak again. He wasn't human, he was _better_ , he couldn't be weak…

"I hate you." The words slipped out. "I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate _all of you_." He had spent all of his life running after them, and this is what he got?

Fine.

Ari pushed himself away from the door and squared his shoulders. Everything made sense now. No more what-ifs, no more wishing. The worst had happened and now it didn't matter.

He headed for the elevator. He'd go back to Dr. Howard. He'd do his job; he'd save the world. But he'd never, never talk to any of the Flock again. They could stay here and rot for all he cared, because they felt the same way about him.

The elevator doors opened and he stormed out, but by the time he got to the end of the hallway he had lost some momentum. He couldn't go back to Dr. Howard. Not now. Dr. Howard had been right, yeah, and he hadn't been a jerk about it when he played the recording, but the last thing Ari wanted was his sympathy. He couldn't… he couldn't be around anything even slightly soft; he'd start crying. And he couldn't cry.

Amy. Maybe she was still around. He could find her. She'd still be tiny, but it wasn't like she'd tell him to get lost. She hadn't minded that he was human, just that he was weak and that he had been too scared to follow her around. And he wasn't weak now—he wasn't ever going to be weak again. Dr. Howard hadn't told him where she was but it wasn't like Ari couldn't find his way to the dorms where they had first put him. He headed off, filled with newfound determination.

It wasn't that hard to get to, roughly, where he remembered the dorms being. The problem was that there was nothing there—the Pepto-Bismol-pink doors that had opened into the cafeteria were gone, replaced by a stretch of freshly-painted white wall. As he headed down the hallway, he choked on the dust in the air, and the stink of fresh paint made him want to vomit. All he had was a three-foot stretch where he didn't have to breath in paint fumes, and that was only because a chunk of the wall had been blasted away, showing a small patch of pale sky.

Ari headed toward the room he remembered, only to trip over a crack in the floor. He stood, and the world swirled around him—again. He didn't have time for this. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself, only to have it come away covered in white paint.

This was pointless. He turned around and headed off down the hallway, retracing his steps. Sooner or later he'd come across something he recog—

He slammed into somebody and stumbled back.

"Hey asshole, watch where you're going!"

Ari lifted his eyes and focused on the Eraser he had barreled into. He was taller than any Eraser Ari had seen before—almost seven feet—with huge daggerlike claws, bulging muscles, and a vicious underbite. His eyes weren't golden anymore, but Ari could recognize him from a mile away.

You didn't forget what somebody looked like when you were the one who had made them look that way.

"Fantastic, they gave the runt a makeover." Robert cracked his knuckles.

Ari glared up at him. "Get out of my way."

"Make me, weakling," Robert snapped. He swung a fist.

Ari saw the punch coming ages before it could land. He ducked and elbowed Robert in the jaw. Robert stumbled back but righted himself. When he snarled, Ari saw the blood on his teeth.

"You're dead now."

"You said that before," Ari retorted, and leapt at him.

Robert was bigger now, and strong enough that even a glancing blow was enough to jar every one of Ari's bones. But he was _slower_ , and he lumbered, and it was easy as breathing to dodge his punches.

Robert's eyes narrowed. "You think you're hot shit," he panted. He lashed out again, this time with an open hand. Ari skittered back, but he wasn't fast enough. One of Robert's claws dragged down his forehead. Ari could feel it scrape against his skull, and then his world turned white.

He hit the ground hard. He tried to blink, to orient himself, but all that did was make his right eye scream in protest. His stomach roiled. What did Robert do?

Robert leaned over him, teeth bared.

Ari could have rolled away.

But he was sick of running, sick of getting hurt. He lashed out at Robert, hoping to rip his face up in return.

His claws tore through Robert's throat.

The huge Eraser stumbled back, choking. He was mouthing words, but only gurgles came out. His throat was a mess of shredded skin, spewing blood.

Ari forced himself to his feet. He was half-blind, and the right side of his face had been ripped open, but he stumbled toward Robert regardless. The older boy tripped over himself and curled against the wall, hands locked over his throat. Blood streamed out from his interlaced fingers and pooled on the floor.

"I—I—" Ari choked out, and put a hand on Robert's shoulder. Maybe they could get him to a whitecoat, maybe they could—

Robert twisted to the sound of Ari's voice, his eyes hazy. Already his face was bone-white. His mouth opened and blood bubbled up between his lips. Ari froze.

Robert reached out with a bloody hand and grabbed Ari's neck.

Ari could feel the other boy's pulse, thudding slower and slower.

And he felt it stop.

Robert lay dead, curled around a pool of his own cooling blood, his hand locked around Ari's throat. Some of the fresh paint had rubbed off on his forehead and was drying in streaks.

It was that paint that held Ari's eyes as he struggled to breathe. Blood was streaming freely down his face, trickling down his chest and soaking into his shirt. His skin was stinging and screaming. A small bit of something that felt like Jello slid down his cheek and plopped on the floor, and his stomach twisted as he realized what it was. But the horror didn't get a chance to overwhelm him—every single bit of his body was ready to call it quits. He just wanted everything to _stop_. He slumped forward.

* * *

 _Don't forget to review!_ :)


	27. Changing Minds (Remix)

_Thanks to Tokoloshe Monster, AbsolutelyAbbie, Guest, Jaya, pinfeather, and becktoral._

* * *

Nudge stared at the ceiling from her spot on the floor, breathing heavily. Her stomach ached—not only from hunger, but also from the thousands of crunches she had been doing. In this white-walled room with nothing to do, sleep came easy, no matter how terrified she was of what they could do to her once she was out. What they might already _have_ done to her—the room could be laced with some kind of brain drug that was making her crazy by tiny degrees. And then when she was brainwashed and crazy they'd make her, like, fight other mutants to the death like Max and Fang and Iggy had done, or they'd make her work for them like an obedient little lab rat, or—

Her heartbeat was pounding in her ears, and tears were rising to her eyes. What if they had done this to the others? What was her family going through? What was _Ari_ going through, since he had been here the longest? And Max and Fang and Iggy were the oldest, they were probably being tested right now. And Gazzy was the only one who was old enough but not messed-up enough to watch horror movies, and now he was in one. And Angel was going to be in everybody's heads, suffering right along with any mutant in her immediate Nudge was trapped, unable to help them, able to do anything…

She tugged her sweatshirt up to cover the bottom of her face and breathed like she would into a paper bag. Hyperventilation wasn't going to get her anywhere, she told herself. Max wasn't hyperventilating right now, she was planning an escape and a giant rescue mission for all of them, and Nudge had to be ready to help her. She had to be tough enough.

Slowly her breathing evened out, and she was able to pull the cloth away from her face. It was scratchy-clean and light gray; exactly identical to the sweatshirt she had been wearing before they had shoved this one through the slot in the door. Next to her dark skin the fabric looked unnatural, alien, almost blinding in its brightness. She scowled. When she got out of here, after they were finished blowing this place to smithereens and getting fixed up by Iggy, she was going to go to the nearest Goodwill and buy or steal a _dress_ , one with fabric softer than a baby's butt and enough color to make a rainbow puke with envy. And then she was going to beg Max to take the Flock to a diner and everybody could have a huge stack of pancakes…

Her stomach growled, and she prodded it. "Shut up, you," she muttered, her fantasy dissolving as anger bubbled up.

Why did the School have to care about them, why couldn't they just live normal lives, why did everything have to hurt and why did Ari have to get kidnapped and Jeb die and her breath was hitching again, and she didn't _want_ to cry but she was doing it anyway, tears streaming freely down her face.

The door swung open.

"On your feet, runt!" The Eraser who bellowed this was female, an even six feet tall, and built like a linebacker. Another one stood at its side, hand resting on a cattle prod. Sniffling, Nudge stood, and tried not to flinch too much when her hands were cuffed and the Erasers' hands closed around her upper arms like iron bands. Overly warm, meaty iron bands with claws sharp enough to draw blood. Erasers ran hot, hotter than bird kids, and being near them was like being surrounded by space heaters—Nudge's blood was boiling.

As they marched her down the hallway and into the elevator, a thousand ideas flickered through her head. She could smash their toes, rip her twiggy arms free, and sprint for the nearest window. She could break into an operating room and hold a whitecoat hostage with a scalpel to his jugular. She could do a thousand things, but every single one of them would end in the same way—her body lying lifeless on the white linoleum floor, gunned down, ripped apart, electrocuted, neck snapped…

The elevator doors dinged open, and the Erasers hauled her out into the hallway, dragging her to a room and dumping her on a folding chair. The cold metal dug into her haunches, and she squirmed.

"Hello," said the whitecoat sitting across from her. Her eyes had burst veins and deep shadows under them, and something in Nudge's stomach flip-flopped. She had looked like that after bad dreams that had left her sobbing, burying her face into a pillow so Angel couldn't hear her. But this lady was a mad scientist psycho, as Max would say, as Iggy would say, as Fang would nod in agreement to, so she deserved what she got. "You're…"

"Nudge." The name slipped out, and only when it was hanging in the air did she realize that lying was a possibility. But what the heck, it's not like she had a birth certificate for them to track down.

Nudge tried to make her eyes as wide as possible. Maybe if they thought she was nice, they wouldn't hurt her. And maybe if this whitecoat was kinda softish, not a total sadist, she'd be really anti-hurting-kids, and… and maybe pigs would fly. But it was worth a shot. "Who're you?"

"Sally," the whitecoat said, and then blinked. "Dr. Johnson, I mean. I'm a psychologist—amongst other things. I'm here to talk about what you want."

"What _I_ want," Nudge repeated. She rested her elbows on the table, chin in her palms. "Well, I mean, I don't want to die."

"That's a good start," said Dr. Johnson. "I can assure you that you dying isn't a thing that's going to happen. Dr. Garcia has laid down express orders."

Nudge forced her face into a smile. "That's great! Can you also make sure that I don't get, like, electrocuted or fed radioactive dye or forced to fight Erasers to the death or—" Her breath was hitching now, panicked, and her heart was pounding like she was a rabbit running from a fox. "—dissected alive or, like, used as a living mushroom garden, or put on a treadmill for ten hours, or stuck in a wind tunnel, or…" She couldn't talk anymore, she could just gulp in air, gasping as her throat clogged up and her eyes filled with tears.

 _No_ , this wasn't how it was going to go. She couldn't let this flub; she couldn't go back to that _cell_ —

Cell.

Ella's number.

They had taken the beaded bracelet, but they hadn't taken that. It had faded to near-invisibility but she had repeated the digits to herself hundreds of times over the hours, trying to keep herself grounded. She took a breath in.

 _Five five five one five seven nine six eight—three fives make fifteen, seventy-nine, sixty-eight…_

Her still-bruised ribs ached from the deep breaths she took, but finally she was able to let the last few tears run down her face and look up at Dr. Johnson.

The whitecoat looked paler than usual, and her hands were shaking. Nudge winced—she didn't want to have to see a whitecoat being weak. Whitecoats weren't supposed to be weak. They weren't supposed to act like that. They had never acted like that when she was a kid.

"Don't worry," Dr. Johnson said, her voice trembling. "None of that's going to happen to you. I promise. But is there anything you want… like, a different room?"

"Well," Nudge said, her mind reeling. "A bed would be nice. I have a mattress on the floor and it's not the same, you know? I'm cold all the time and whenever I go to sleep it feels like my feet are going to fall off. And I want a clock, too, so I can know what time it is, because I haven't known how long I've been in hereand it's driving me crazy. And," she swallowed a lump in her throat, "can I see my family? I'm really scared and frightened and all alone."

Dr. Johnson's eyes got shinier and her hand shifted towards Nudge before coming to rest on the table. Carefully, deliberately, like the reaching-out hadn't happened.

A cog turned over in Nudge's mind. She widened her eyes and blinked, calling up memories of how she had felt when Iggy had fallen, blood streaming from his nose like water from a faucet. Was he even alive? Couldn't you bleed to death if you had a nosebleed and they ignored it?

"Please," she said, her voice shaking. "I just wanna see my family."

Her stomach twisted. If Dr. Johnson was really a nice lady who just wanted to help, then what Nudge was doing now was dirty and _wrong_ , like offering somebody a snack and then stealing five hundred dollars of their Monopoly money. And if she wasn't, if she was just another whitecoat, then Nudge was being friendly to a complete _psycho_.

"It's your family that I want to talk about," Dr. Johnson said, straightening her back and rubbing at her eyes. "You want to see them again?"

"Of course I do," Nudge said. "They're my _family_."

"Would you be willing to cooperate if it meant that you'd be able to see them again?"

 _Cooperate with_ what _, you mad scientist freakazoid?_ It was on the tip of Nudge's tongue, highlighted in her mind in neon-green. But Nudge bit her lip against the tirade that was bubbling up in her, doing its best to get out. If she could see her family again, they could get out. They could rescue Ari and hightail it to… somewhere, anywhere where they could be freezing cold and hungry but _free_. So Nudge bobbed her head like she belonged on a car dashboard.

Dr. Johnson beamed at that, her eyes lighting up. She was paper-white with chipmunk cheeks, so the effect was closer to _dough being kneaded_ than it was _exuberance_ , but Nudge still found herself smiling back, if only a little. Her stomach clenched when she realized what she was doing—playing exactly into their hands. Max wouldn't do this. Iggy wouldn't either. Fang—well, Fang was a mystery. But he had gone through the same stuff as Max and Iggy, so he wouldn't either.

But Max and Iggy and Fang weren't here to fight their way out. Angel wasn't here to tell her how to figure out a way around this. Gazzy and Ari weren't here to make threats and give her backup. Jeb wasn't here to put a hand on her shoulder and walk her through the problem. Nudge was alone, really and truly, and if it took being a horrible person to get back to her family—she'd do it.

Dr. Johnson adjusted her earpiece. "Dante? I need you to change Nu—subject twenty-five's roo—containment level. What? _Yes_ , I'm sure. She's cooperating and not a danger to herself or others—she doesn't need to be cooped up anymore. …No, this isn't like— _no_ , she's actively cooperating. Holding conversations and everything. She's talkative and responsive, really. I think she's clear for Blu—oh, right. Green, then." After a prolonged moment, she smiled. "Thanks."

When she looked back at Nudge, the smile was still there, and Nudge had a feeling that she was supposed to reciprocate. So she pulled her lips back and exposed her teeth. "Thank you," she said, but the words were bitter in her mouth.

Dr. Johnson gave her a smile. "It's no problem, really. Do you have any questions?"

Nudge bit her lip against a flood. Where was her family? What did they want to do with her? Why had they taken Ari—did the Erasers just mess up? Why were they so sick, and evil, and twisted, that they had to capture innocent kids who never did a thing in their life and experiment on them?

"Why was it so _stupid hard_?" Her voice hitched against a sob, and she bit down on her lip. "Jeb got all of us out and we couldn't even—couldn't even get—"

And now she was crying again, her face buried in her hands. She hunched her shoulders as she sobbed. The Erasers could see her, and being weak in front of them was signing her death warrant, but her stupid chest wouldn't stop heaving and her face felt like it was burning. She _knew_ Dr. Johnson was watching her and feeling _sorry_ for her, poor little mutant girl, and that was what she needed, to be taken for a harmless little kid, but it made her stomach twist and bile rise into her mouth. But what if she never saw her family again? She had to get it together; she had to look stable; that's why they were putting her in whatever level Green was.

So she forced herself to slow down, to take deep shuddering breaths. Her hands felt cold against her face as she wiped her tears away. And when she looked Dr. Johnson in the eye, the whitecoat was gnawing on her lip. She reached a hand out slowly, only to yank it back.

"Well, you see," Dr. Johnson said, and then blinked, flinching. She shot a glance at the Erasers. "Could you leave?"

"We're supposed to stay in here, in case it goes feral," one of them growled.

 _It_? She wasn't an _it_. She was a _person_ , she could think and talk. Nudge half-twisted around, ready to tell the Eraser just that, but both of them had left before she could open her mouth.

So she turned back to face Dr. Johnson, who was still chewing on her lip.

"Look," the whitecoat said. "If I tell you this—oh! Wait a second—" She unclipped her earpiece and slipped it into one of the pockets of her lab coat. "If I tell you this, you can't tell _anybody_ where you learned it from. It's top secret. Do you promise?"

Nudge felt her stomach twist. She could almost see Max's face, twisted in anger. _Making deals with a whitecoat?_ Max would have said. _I'd rather die. How about instead, you tell me, and then I_ consider _not breaking your face_.

But Max wasn't here.

"Promise," Nudge said. She could always break it later, couldn't she? It wouldn't be too hard to tell Max and Iggy about whatever brand-spanking-new security system the School had installed. And then they could figure out their way around it and rescue Ari.

Dr. Johnson leaned across the table. "The reason you got out of the School was because Dr. Batchelder was allowed to take you out," she whispered. "He was supposed to train you, monitor you, and report back to us. Dr. Garcia allowed it."

She sat back, folding her hands and straightening her spine. Nudge didn't move.

They had never escaped from the School.

Jeb wasn't ever one of the good guys. When she had thought up long and elaborate reasons for why he had decided to not be a whitecoat, never gathering up the guts to ask him. She had thought that he must have risked a lot to get them all out. But he hadn't. He'd been sitting pretty the whole time.

Every single time Nudge had dreamed about the School she had woken up sweating and shaking. She'd grab a pillow and whatever book she was working on and head into the kitchen to make hot chocolate and read until the sun came up. Sometimes it actually worked. Most times it didn't, and memories of kids with skin sloughing off would haunt her, scaring her so bad that she couldn't even touch the pages of her book. But a few times Max or Iggy would stumble into the kitchen too, woken up by their own nightmares, and they'd tell her the same thing—it sucked, but it wasn't going to happen again. Jeb had taken them out. They were safe.

They had never been safe.

It took every last drop of willpower Nudge had not to slam her hands on the table and scream into Dr. Johnson's face that she wasn't a project, she wasn't an experiment, and just because she wasn't in a cage didn't mean that she was any tiny bit grateful to be a _puppet_. She made her voice softer and a bitter bit of hate expanded in her, twisting its tendrils around her ribcage. "So that's why you kidnapped Ari?"

Dr. Johnson nodded. "A test to see how you were progressing. Dr. Batchelder had been… reticent with his information. We knew he was stalling. We thought it was because you weren't doing as well as you should be, so we decided to… well, you know."

Nudge stared.

"Oh!" Dr. Johnson cleared her throat. "Reticent means—"

"I know what reticent means," Nudge said. She rubbed at her mouth. This felt like that time that she had to take a test on cell biology, and she had barely paid attention to Jeb talking about the difference between mitosis and meiosis and only cracked open her textbook the night before because she was too busy reading. She sat down to take the test and she knew that she was going to fail it. And failing had scared her then, because she might get grounded, but now? Had Jeb been sending back their test scores, their mile times, what they ate for breakfast? Had he told the School that Gazzy once threw up for half an hour after eating raw eggplant? Dr. Johnson said he'd been _reticent_ , but when he knew every bit of what went on in their home… what good was holding back a few details here and there?

The white lights were screamingly bright but it wasn't like turning them off would do anything—it had been all sunlight and wide-open skies back in the E-shaped house.

Dr. Johnson was fiddling with her earpiece, finally clipping it in. It exploded into static.

" _Sally? Sally, are you okay? Sally!_ " The man who was shouting this had a strong Mexican accent.

She flinched. "I'm fine, Dante, I'm fine. Turn it down a little? …Yes, thank you. …No, I'm fine. It must have been a malfunction. …I'll do that."

She turned to face Nudge. "I'm sorry about that. I have to go. Are you okay?"

Nudge nodded.

"And… you will still cooperate, right?"

Did it matter? She had already been cooperating for years. But the whitecoat wanted an answer, so Nudge nodded again.

Dr. Johnson smiled at her. "Alright. We'll take you to level Green, and you can see your family again."

This meant that she had to say something, didn't it. Nudge sat for a moment, trying to muster up gratitude that wouldn't feel like it had come out of a can. Finally she forced a smile. "Thanks."

"And please, pleasedon't tell them… don't tell _anybody_ … you know."

Nudge's stomach twisted. "I won't," she said.

Dr. Johnson went to the door. When she came back the Erasers were with her. Nudge barely felt their hands close around her arms. When they led her away, she went without a struggle.

* * *

 _ch27 is something I'm really excited about, for several reasons._

 _1\. Nuuuuuuudge! I love Nudge so much, you guys. She's easily one of my favorite characters to write POV chapters for, because her way of perceiving and interacting with the world is so different from Iggy, Max, and Ari's. And she has a really unique narrative voice that carries over into her dialogue. But not only that—as this chapter shows, she's smart and talented in a way that a lot of people wouldn't expect. She adapts to her situation, she works with other people to get what she wants, and she does it all while being a morally conflicted eleven-year-old. It was a lot of fun to work with "I need to do this, but I shouldn't because it will make me a bad person in two different ways."_

 _2\. This chapter also has the trope of "evil mad scientist explains their evil plans to the captive hero," but it's turned on its head. How?_

 _—Dr. Johnson, as just about every chapter demonstrates, isn't really evil. She's a far cry from a good person, but I wouldn't call her truly EVIL in the style of, say, the whitecoats from canon. Your interpretations are of course subject to vary, but you do have to recognize that she barely hits any points on the mad scientist trope checklist._

 _—Nudge isn't the hero. She's a core member of the main cast with an important role to play in both the plot and in group dynamics, but she isn't really the hero. Max is. If Max were the one learning this thing from Dr. Johnson, the focus would be "Jeb did this thing," because that's how being the hero informs how you interact with scenes. And honestly, that as a revelation scene for something that y'all already knew seems pretty cheap. Hence, Nudge—she makes it so the focus isn't on "Jeb doing this thing" but rather "Nudge learning that Jeb did this thing and having her view of her childhood radically impacted." You know, fun stuff._

 _—The "evil plan" in question isn't exactly evil. Again, it's morally ambiguous, and pretty damn skeevy. Child soldiers are bad, people. But it's frankly not as bad as some of the other stuff that happens, and the Flock got a decent childhood out of it._

 _—Learning about the "evil plan" doesn't give "the hero" anything to work with. Jeb is, to the Flock at least, dead and gone. There's nothing they can do to un-raise themselves. All this does is pull a rug of happy childhood memories out from underneath Nudge's feet, and gives her a dilemma. Does she shoot the dog and tell everybody about it? Does she sully Jeb's memory? Or does she let the Flock live a lie? We'll see how Angel the mind-reader plays into this as well in future chapters._

 _—The "evil plan" isn't really a surprise to the reader. It's been set up since the beginning with the group chat, and "Change in Delivery" was pretty explicit in the confirmation that yeah, Jeb was working for the School. This isn't a case of both the hero and the reader being in the dark—it's about the cast catching up to the reality of their situation, and the impact that this has on them. Knowing about the situation beforehand gives the audience some perspective and stops the scene from feeling like too much of a plot convenience. At least that's what I think. Honestly, I'm usually not trying to surprise you guys here. You read the books! You should have an idea of what you're in for. Until you don't, of course, but that is half of the fun._

 _So that's what I liked about this chapter. How do you guys feel about it? How do you feel about Nudge?_


	28. Hurricane

_Thanks to everybody who reviewed in-between updates, and to my beta-reader._

* * *

The elevator ride down was exactly the same as the ride up, only two floors shorter. Nudge stood, shoulders hunched, between the two Erasers as they descended into the pits of hell. This time, though, she couldn't muster up an escape plan or even the enthusiasm to _want_ one.

She didn't deserve to escape, to be free. She was just as bad as a whitecoat, just as bad as—

Tears were choking her and she swallowed them, sniffling. An Eraser snorted and sneered down at her, its lip pulling back to reveal teeth that looked like broken glass. Teeth that could rip her skin open, spatter her blood on the walls…

Her scalp still ached from when they had dragged her down the hallway, a shameful bruise that throbbed in time with her heart. That was barely anything and it still hurt—what would dyingfeel like? Like her ribs cracking when her bat was used against her? That had only been a moment, a second of explosive pain and they had healed by the time she had woken up, but breathing deeply still hurt. Maybe that was a good thing. She had already cried too much. She had always cried too much—over just about everything. A book character dying, the hurt rabbit she had found in the woods, when Angel lost her first tooth… when she was ten Jeb had had to buy the tissues with aloe vera lotion because he didn't want her running around with a red nose all the time.

Had he put that in his reports? What was stopping him from telling everybody how weak she was, and he and Max always said that she had to toughen up. With Max it was tough love, because that was how Max worked, but what if Jeb knew that she was going to get killed if she was weak?

 _Keep calm_ , Nudge told herself. _You can't have a panic attack in an elevator_. She'd be dead for sure—the way these Erasers were glaring at her meant that they'd take _anything_ as a good reason to smash her against the wall, to rip open her throat…

That wasn't helping.

 _Think about what you_ have _and then think about what you_ need, Jeb always said. Well, what Nudge _needed_ was to get him out of her head. What she neededwas to see her family. And what she _had_?

No weapons, barely any physical strength, nothing aside from the clothes on her back and a ten-digit string of numbers in her head. But somehow, with only that, she managed to sell herself out to a whitecoat and cry in front of the whitecoat andthe Erasers twice.

This time tears didn't rise to her eyes, but she felt like she was burning up all the same. The elevator doors slid open and she was marched to a door with a slot by its side. An Eraser swiped a card through the slot and it beeped.

The door swung open and Nudge found herself staring at Angel and Gazzy. The storm inside her head was drowning the rest of the world out. Angel was curled up on one of the several couches, eyes screwed shut, dead to the world—but she'd wake up eventually, and she couldn't find out about what Nudge had done. Nudge couldn't…

She'd already done the worst thing possible and sold her family out. She couldn't let them know that Jeb was bad, too. He was already dead. She'd let him rest in peace. She wouldn't make the Flock feel like she did. She couldn't do that to Gazzy, and if Angel found out then everybodywould, especially—

"Where's Ari?" Her voice was raspy.

Gazzy just shrugged. "We didn't see him. We woke up here." He sat on the couch, pushing Angel's feet away to make space for Nudge. "We… we didn't get away."

Nudge thought of the guns the Erasers had been carrying on Saturday. No surprise that they hadn't used them. But those weren't the only kind of guns. "Tranquilizer darts?" she guessed.

Gazzy shook his head. "We… we weren't supposed to, but…"

"You went inside," Nudge said. She sat down on the floor and pulled her legs to her chest, resting her forehead on her knees. Of course her eight-year-old brotherwas braver than her. Of course he wasn't going to sell out. He'd never abandon the courage that Max had drummed into them, the code of values that she'd taught them.

 _Well, look where it got her_ , a sneaky, traitorous voice whispered in the back of Nudge's mind. She bit down on her lip hard, drowning it out with a swell of pain, not letting go until she started to taste blood. And then she looked back up at Gazzy. "Why's Angel asleep?"

Gazzy frowned. "I don't know. I thought… it was something in the food, but we've been eating the same stuff, and the stuff that Jeb had said was harderto drug… Maybe she got hit hard in a fight? I didn't see her for all of it. I _tried_ , but there were too many Erasers…"

Nudge's stomach twisted. "We usually heal faster than that. Even in the head." According to some of Jeb's old medical textbooks, the way humans healed meant that head injuries stuck with them. Sometimes they were a little shaky for the rest of their lives. Sometimes they were worse than just shaky.

"I _know_ ," Gazzy said, sounding like he'd repeated her words to himself a thousand times. "When we woke up—" he pointed to the far wall, and Nudge's heart was in her throat when she saw there was a _clock_ on it, an actual clock, telling her that it was 11:36—in the morning or at night she didn't know, but it was 11:36 and that was more than she had for God knew how long. "—it was eight-thirty. And…" He pointed at another spot, further down on the wall, and Nudge saw a row of blue-crayon tally marks. "That was how many times it was eight-thirty." There was another, longer, row of tally marks, in red. " _That's_ how many times the Erasers come to check on us. To make sure we haven't killed each other."

Nudge squinted at the tallies and did a quick division in her head. If Gazzy had woken up the day they'd broken in, then the Flock had been in the School for three days. And Ari had been in the School for almost a week. The churning in her stomach got worse. They _had_ to find him. And she'd do anything to make that happen.

And that was the worst part.

"Wha's the worst part…" This sleepy murmur also came from the couch, and Nudge scuttled back as she recognized her sister's voice.

"Nothing!"

Angel peeped over the back of the couch at her, blonde hair mussed and blue eyes wide. "Nudge, what's—"

"Don't read my mind." The words tripped out of Nudge's mouth. She tried to pull more up, but they wouldn't come. What explanation could she _possibly_ offer? "Just… don't." Blood was starting to drip off of her chin, and she wiped at it with a hand.

Angel frowned. "O- _kay_ … If you say so…"

Nudge swallowed, her mouth dry. "Thanks."

"What's wrong?" Gazzy asked. "Nudge, what's the matter?"

"Was it kids in cages?" Angel asked. "I've seen those already. I've seen worse stuff, too—it's okay. Max had a nightmare where she got cut open and all her organs got taken out. You don't have to try to keep it hidden."

"No!" Nudge snapped, pushing herself further back. "I swear to God, Angel, don't look!" At least with kids in cages Angel could tell herself that it _wasn't her_. But Jeb… Jeb had raised her and all of them.

Angel's mouth twisted. "Do you want me to walk around with my eyes shut, too?"

Nudge ground her teeth together. "Angel. Don't."

"I _won't_ ," Angel snapped back, rising to a kneeling position so she could glare down at Nudge. "But at least tell me why."

 _Because I'm a filthy stinking traitor who'd suck up to a whitecoat to save my own skin, and Jeb is too_. The words were on the tip of Nudge's tongue, filling her mouth with bile. She couldn't move her lips; it would all come spilling out. Instead she just shook her head again.

Angel sighed, disgusted. "Fine." She flopped back onto the couch.

Nudge swallowed. "Are you sick? Hurt?"

"No," Angel said, sounding petulant. A moment of silence passed. "I've been getting headaches."

"Oh," Nudge said. She gnawed on her lip, working through the pain of her teeth grinding against already-broken skin. She deserved it. "Why?"

"I need to find Max," Angel said, which wasn't really an answer. "We need to get out of here."

"Well, _duh_." Gazzy folded his arms across his stomach, but he couldn't hide how his voice was shaking. Nudge and Angel stared at him. He sighed. "Sorry. That was a jerk thing to say." Another moment of silence dragged by, punctuated only by the barely-audible sound of the clock ticking. "What kind of headaches?"

"Really noisy ones," Angel said, still sullen.

Gazzy frowned. "Like the kinds you give me?"

Angel pushed herself up onto her elbows. "What?" She didn't sound upset anymore, and her eyes were wide.

"Yeah," Nudge said. "You get upset. It's… like a bomb going off in my head." Was Angel getting so upset about all of this that she was hurting _herself_?

Gazzy jolted, looking like he'd just stuck a fork in an outlet, and Nudge scrambled to her feet. "Gasman!" Had Angel zapped him this time? No, Angel was on the couch, shaking him, and he was…

Grinning?

"I know how we're going to get out of here!"

Nudge didn't sit back down so much as crumple, her legs shaking to the point where standing didn't feel like a viable option. She wrapped her wings around herself. Did she want to get out? Yes. Did she want to never have to see a whitecoat again? Yes. But… did she _deserve_ to get out? She had cooperated with a whitecoat… even if it was just to meet up with her family; it was still the wrong thing to do. And Dr. Johnson had been _nice_ … so if Nudge had turned traitor just to lead on a whitecoat that wasn't that bad after all…

Maybe she should just stay in the School and let them drain her until she was dead. They'd be a couple of parasites feeding off of each other.

"—but we need to get to the Flock. Or to stuff that we can make blow up. Nudge?" Gazzy shook her shoulder, and she blinked up at him.

"Yeah?"

He frowned. "Were you listening?"

"Yeah."

Angel didn't say anything. She didn't need to.

Gazzy's frown deepened. "We need to figure out how to get to the others, so we can get out of here. Why did they move you here?"

"They took me upstairs first," was all Nudge could bring herself to say. She hugged her legs tighter, gnawed on her lip some more.

"O… kay," Gazzy said. "Do you know how to get us upstairs at the same time as, like, Max or Iggy? Or Fang? 'Cause we're gonna need to bust out of here and find Ari…"

Ari.

Nudge didn't deserve to be saved, but Ari did. And Gazzy and Angel did. And Fang and Max and Iggy did. And if she had to get herself out, which she didn't deserve, to help them—she'd do it. She swallowed. She didn't know when the Erasers would come for her again to take her to see Dr. Johnson. It could be in an hour, or in a week, and they didn't have that luxury. But they'd be back soon, to check up, and Nudge couldn't face them with the knowledge that she was just as much of a leech as she had been when she was brought in.

Blood was trickling down her throat now, and she rubbed at it. She wiped off her hand on her sweatpants, leaving red smears against the gray fabric.

And then it hit her.

"Yeah," she said slowly. "I can get us to the others."

* * *

 _The chapter title is_ absolutely _a shout-out to Hamilton the musical, which I do not own. I'd go for something more inventive but I genuinely cannot think of a good title._

 _Technically speaking, the length of this chapter (a piddly 2k words) and the lack of POV shifting means that ch27 and 28 could have been a single chapter. However, I like it better as an event/aftermath duo. A similar split occurs with ch29/30._

 _Now that you've had her for two chapters in a row, what do you think of Nudge?_


	29. Reunion

_Beta-read by Tokoloshe Monster._

* * *

When they did come for me, it wasn't anything like the last time. It was a thousand times worse.

The door slammed open. Before I could throw a punch or shoot a glare, there was a meaty hand over my mouth and a needle in my neck. My heart turned over in my chest.

The Eraser pulled it out and I twisted free, kicking and biting. My knees hit the ground and I crawled into the corner. I had to brace myself against the walls to get up and stay that way.

"Bring it," I snarled. Or—tried to snarl. My tongue was a slab of useless meat that flopped in my mouth. And apparently God had decided that standing wasn't all it was cracked up to be, because my legs chose that moment to give out.

The Eraser who had injected me snorted. "Hey—Magda! It's down!" It wrapped a hand around my arm and yanked me up. I tried to pull away, but my muscles didn't even twitch.

Oh, no. Oh no oh no oh no.

I tried again. Nothing.

Tears would have risen to my eyes if my body wasn't being completely useless. I tried to scream but I couldn't even open my mouth. They could do anything to me and I couldn't even fight back. I was a flesh sack, a puppet, ready to be thrown around or cut into a thousand pieces. If they slit my throat or wrists or femoral arteries I wouldn't be able to do anything but lie there and bleed out like a cow being slaughtered. My heart didn't even have the decency to race at those thoughts. It was plodding along steadily, completely unaware of how screwed I was.

Another Eraser walked in, pushing a wheelchair. The first one strapped me in, and then we headed off down the hallway.

All I could do was glare straight ahead as they wheeled me into the elevator. And then glare at the doors. I didn't even know what floor we got out on—the control panel wasn't in my line of sight, I couldn't get my eyes to focus on it, and we were out in the hallway before I could try to turn my head to see it. The hallway itself was full of whitecoats, and I ended up being pushed behind a small group of them for a while as they wheeled away an empty gurney bed. As they headed away I caught sight of the rust-colored stains on the white bed.

We stopped in front of a white door that looked exactly like every other white door in this godforsaken hellhole. The room behind the door was more of the same—a recovery room. I had been in them a few times, when I was a kid and had gotten too beat up to be a usefultest subject. At the School, they were all about efficiency. So they'd dump me on a bed with a lumpy mattress and scratchy sheets, pump me full of Ketamine so I was too woozy get up, stick an IV in my arm, and have some whitecoat with a three-Eraser guard come around every few hours to pour OJ down my throat and make sure I hadn't died yet. I'd never stayed in a room for longer than twelve hours, but Iggy said he had been in one for a whole day after they had accidentally blinded him when they were trying to improve his eyes. He said there had been a kid who died in the bed next to him in-between whitecoat visits. They had choked on their own vomit, or puked up too much blood, he couldn't tell which.

A recovery room meant that you were messed up enough for death to be a logical next step, and my stomach twisted as I saw the bed by the window.

Nudge was lying in it, her inner arms stitched together with black twine. The sunlight made it easier for me to pick out the angry red scars underneath the twine. A whitecoat was hovering over her, hooking up a long plastic tube to the needle in the crook of her elbow.

"You have the other one?" the whitecoat asked, not looking up. "Bring it over here."

They parked me over by Nudge's bed and the whitecoat frowned. He dropped the plastic tubing onto the bed and grabbed a pair of scissors, cutting around my arm to remove my sweatshirt sleeve. He was so close that his stubble was scratching my face, but he didn't seem to notice. It was like I was just an extra-large blood bag, just a sack of meat. Even the cruelty of the Erasers would be better than this.

The whitecoat tugged off the cut sleeve of my sweatshirt and stuck a needle in my arm, hooked it up to the tubing. He cranked down Nudge's bed so she was practically lying on the floor. Only then did he seem to notice that I was about as responsive as your average corpse.

"Christ," he muttered. "It'll take forever to get the blood transferred with _that_ heartrate." He glared at the Erasers. "What were you thinking?"

"Well, this one's hostile—volatile—"

"Get out," the whitecoat said flatly. When they did as he said he stalked to the end of the room, muttering something that sounded like _one job_ intermixed with a lot of frankly unnecessary swear words. I tried to keep my eyes on him—and mostly failed—as he grabbed what looked like a marker. I didn't get a good look at it before he slammed it against my neck.

My heart exploded. I could feel it thudding behind my eyes like I was in the middle of a fight. The world turned crystal-clear as my blood started flowing down the tubing, down to Nudge.

The whitecoat let out a breath. "Finally." What, was he terrified he'd lose a test subject?

I shot a glare at him, only slightly distracted by the godawful stabbing sensation that had started up in my hands and feet.

Wait.

Very carefully, I flexed my calves—they cramped like hell, and I fought to keep my face from twisting in pain. I swallowed, hating how dry my mouth was. I blinked. Tears rose to my eyes, and I had to blink more to get them to go away. I could move again. I could fight back. I could try to get out.

Even though I was strapped down seven times over, trapped in a huge building with dozens of doors and several hundred Erasers between me and what was outside, and hooked up to Nudge by a tube in my arm, it felt like I was thousands of feet in the air with wings spread wide and the wind whipping through my hair, rustling my feathers, freezing my face. I was that much closer to freedom.

I had to fight hard to keep the tears down as the whitecoat gave Nudge and me a once-over. When he spun on his heel and left, a couple bubbled up. I let out a shaky breath and rubbed at my face with my remaining sleeve. And then I leaned forward as far as the straps would let me and unfurled my wings. It wasn't even by an inch, but to be able to move them—I had to get free. I had to. I couldn't go the rest of my life like this, locked in a cell or a cage, only seeing the sunlight through Plexiglass if I saw it at all, never knowing what time of day it was. I'd go crazy. I'd—

I'd try to kill somebody.

My eyes fell on Nudge, half-asleep and all alone. What had happened? Why had she done this? Didn't she know that as long as she was alive, she had to fight, or had she not spent enough time in the School to learn that lesson? Jeb had impressed it upon all of us—but maybe only Iggy and I had been the ones to learn it. Fang…

Fang was my brother. And I loved him. But for him to want to leave Ari behind…

If I had been in the same position I would have charged in the second I saw the building from above. Why would Fang turn down the chance for revenge? Ari was our family, the second-youngest member of it, and whoever had done what they had done to Fang was a sick monster who deserved to die—why not kill two birds with one stone?

…That was a pretty bad metaphor. But still.

The sheets shifted, and I turned my attention to the bed just fast enough to see Nudge blink her eyes open.

"Hey, kiddo." My throat ached. "What happened?"

She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Carefully she edged herself up into a seated position, clinging onto the siderails of the bed for support. Her head wobbled on her neck, and her eyes were unfocused. Still she unfurled her wings for balance and sat as still as a statue. Her mouth moved.

"What?"

"Five minutes," she whispered. "Gimme… five minutes."

She shivered, her bare forearms dimpled with gooseflesh. They had cut her sweatshirt short, too.

"Why did you dothis?"

Again she shook her head, and I could feel my teeth grinding. Nudge was my little sister—I had to look out for her. But I couldn't do that if she wouldn't _talk_ to me.

And yes, I did recognize the irony in that statement.

"They'll be back soon," I hissed. "To unhook me, because there's only so much blood I can give before I run dry and they don't want us _dead_ —just alive enough so they can use us. We have a half a handful of minutes to talk and I swear to God, Nudge, if you kill yourself I will drag you out of Hell to do the job again with my own two hands. You're my family; you don't get to quit on me. What. Happened?"

Nudge let out a whistling breath and pushed herself off of the bed, landing on unsteady feet. She stumbled over to me in my wheelchair, and started tugging at the straps covering my arms. After a long moment of Velcro peeling away from itself, I was free. I ripped off the other straps myself and stood, my head spinning. Blood loss—never fun. But it wasn't like I could just tug out the tube. Nudge was in a worse state than I was.

She grabbed my wrist, her fingers icy, and tugged me toward the door.

I dug in my heels, covered her hand with my own. "Nudge. Explain."

She spun to face me, her eyes looking too big for her face. For a moment she just gaped like a fish, but finally she swallowed and started talking. "We're getting us all out of here," she said, determined and ungrammatical. "They put me in with Gazzy and Angel and we've got a plan. But we have to run. Okay?"

I pulled the door open. "Let's go."

"Elevators," Nudge said. But she hesitated. Finally she took the needle out of her arm and reached over to do the same to me, wrapping the tube around her wrist like a bracelet.

We headed out into the hallway, sticking close together, and made it exactly three feet before Nudge walked straight into a busy whitecoat. "Oh, crap, sorr—"

She froze.

The whitecoat's eyes widened, and she put a hand to her earpiece. "Code re—"

I punched her in the throat. She stumbled back, choking, and I leveled a side kick at her ankles. She went down. I yanked her earpiece out and stomped on it.

"Okay," I said. "We should start—"

Alarms started blaring, in spite of my fantastic tactical decision to wreck that earpiece.

Nudge took off at a sprint down the hallway, banging into the wall and looking like every step was killing her. She twisted around to shout. "Erasers!"

Sure enough, two had rounded the corner, pushing a caged mutant on a trolley. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf, but I didn't have the time to rescue it. I headed after Nudge and together we skidded around the corner and down the hallway. It was full of whitecoats holding clipboards and Erasers dragging mutants, all with somewhere to go.

This… this was going to suck.

I snapped my wings out and balled my hands into the tightest fists I could make, and then I charged.

Not three steps in, an Eraser tried to block my path. I ducked as best I could and kept running, feeling it rip open my shoulder. Nudge shrieked, but the pounding of her feet was steady.

Another Eraser snatched at me, grabbing at my arm. I poured on the speed, wrenching myself free. My wrist screamed in protest as I sprinted away, and I cradled it to my chest, probing at it as best I could.

Dislocated.

We hit the end of the hallway, and alarms started blaring.

"Left," Nudge panted.

I nodded. As we ran, I fixed my wrist. It popped back in with an agonizing pain that whited out the world for a moment. I stumbled and fell. Nudge skidded to a halt and grabbed me by the back of my sweatshirt, trying to pull me along.

I pushed myself up and started running again. My thighs burned, but I could barely feel my lower legs. Black dots swirled in front of my eyes and I bit down on my lower lip.

Keep going. I had to keep going.

We rounded another corner and nearly ran past the elevator doors. Nudge skidded to a stop and slammed her hand over the control panel. When she pulled it away the panel was covered in blood.

Her eyes widened. "The stitches…"

And then the Erasers caught up to us.

The elevator doors slid open and the two of us stumbled back in. I slammed my hand on the "door close" button as Nudge hit the one labeled **B5**. We were fast—of course we were fast. But we weren't fast enough.

An Eraser shouldered its way in through the closing doors.

This was _really_ going to suck.

Nudge let out a breath and balled her hands into fists. But Nudge was wrecked. I shoved her into the back left corner and spread my wings, putting my body between her and the Eraser. "Bring it," I snarled.

The elevator started going down.

The Eraser brought it, snapping out a punch at my head. I ducked away but could only go so far. The blow glanced, leaving me seeing stars. I stumbled, grabbing at the railing. I braced myself against it and snapped out a kick.

The Eraser let out a breathless little scream—I'd hit it in the 'nads. It doubled over and Nudge hit it in the back of the neck with both hands.

I pushed myself off the railing and took a careful step as the Eraser sunk to a knee. If I could get a good kick to the ribs in, this would be over. But the goddamn elevator was too small for me to get in the right spot, even with my wings pulled in.

And just like that, the moment passed. The Eraser shot back up, blood streaming from a bitten-through lip, and dealt Nudge a vicious blow that smashed her against the wall of the elevator. She hit it and slid down it to the ground. She left a trail of blood on the wall.

I saw red. I launched myself at the Eraser and grabbed its neck with both hands. I wanted its eyes to bug out, its face to go purple. I wanted it to feel like I felt when I was pinned up against the wall, watching my family go down one by one.

But of course, it outweighed me by an easy sixty pounds. It took a few baby steps forward and I was forced into a corner. I pushed up, my fingers biting into its neck, my deltoids aching. One of us had to give, and it wasn't going to be me.

It was me. The brute leaned forward and my arms gave way for a half-second—just long enough for it to slam a forearm across my throat. I stomped on its instep and twisted free as it cried out. When I didn't have that awful pressure on my throat I shouldered it into the corner I'd been trapped in. It shoved me and I stumbled.

I hit Nudge. The two of us hit the ground. The Eraser bared a mouth full of bloody teeth and reached for the control panel—

And then it let out an unearthly shriek and sunk to its knees, hands clapped over its ears. I fell back, getting as much distance from it as I could. It was convulsing, letting out cries that only got rougher and weaker. After a moment of this it went limp, and Nudge pulled herself up to rummage through its pockets. The elevator doors slid open as she held up a plastic card.

"For the rooms," she said, but all I could focus on was how she was shaking so hard that her voice trembled. When she stood up her knees gave out and her head thudded against the wall. I half-tripped over an unconscious Eraser as I lunged to help hold her up.

She took a deep breath. "I'm okay. Can you drag the Eraser out while I go get Gazzy and Angel? I don't think I could handle that."

"Go get 'em," I said, and gave her the best grin I could muster.

She nodded but didn't smile as she headed off down the hallway.

I slammed the door open button a few times as I got to dragging. Adrenaline was keeping me from feeling the worst of the pain, but definitely not _all_ of it. My heart was going rabbit-fast and my arms and legs ached. And my head was pounding, which wasn't helped by the fact that half my vision was dark. I lifted a hand and probed gently at the area around my right eye. Yeah, it'd be a while before thatgot better.

I gave a one-eyed glare to the Eraser and kicked its prone body out of the way. Screw it. I could kick just as much ass without my right eye.

On my way back into the elevator I stumbled and fell, banging my head against the wall.

The spike of pain was more intense than getting punched in the face by an Eraser, more painful than slamming my shoulder back into its socket. I yanked at my hair, trying and failing to distract myself from whatever was going on inside my skull…

And then, just abruptly as it had started, it stopped. I was left half-curled on the floor, sweating and shaking. When I pushed myself onto one elbow my stomach lurched, and I could feel the tingling sensation in my mouth that meant I was about to vomit. The stink of blood and metal, made worse by how small the elevator was, didn't help. I took a deep breath to steady myself and stood.

The doors of the elevator began to slide shut.

I slammed my hand on the door open button, my heart racing. Down here, in the lower basement levels, it was quiet. Only a few floors above us were the shrieking alarms and the whitecoats. I couldn't go back there. I couldn't leave my family.

"Max!" Angel skidded into the elevator, breathing hard. She was covered in a cold sweat and her eyes were glittering like ice at night, but she wasn't bruised or scarred, thank God. A little panic was nothing in the face of endless needles and electric shocks and radioactive dyes. I dropped to my knees and hugged her tight.

"Angel," I whispered.

And the Gasman was right behind her, his eyes wide and his face pale. I extended a wing and pulled him into the hug too. He threw his arms around my neck and squeezed hard for a moment before loosening his grip.

"We've gotta go," he said. "Nudge, are you okay?"

Nudge came in. Her wrists had been wrapped up in what looked like strips of sheets, and she was holding two half-gallon bottles of OJ. She passed me one, and I stood to take it, tapping it with hers. "Bottoms up," I said, and started chugging. The sweet, sweet sugar rush kept me from worrying about the possibility that it'd weigh me down later. When about a quarter of the bottle was gone I turned to Nudge. "They had me on the seventh floor."

She nodded, face drawn, and hit that button. "Me too."

We started downward again, and I glanced at Angel, who was wiping her face off with her sweatshirt. "You okay, sweetheart?"

She nodded.

"No she's not," Gazzy protested. "She used her power to knock out the Erasers. And it hurts because something about this place hurts her brain, like—"

Angel kicked him in the shin. "I wasn't the one who slammed my head into the wall for an hour!"

"She wasn't asking me! And besides, I didn't—"

"Guys, _stop it_." I grabbed both of them by the backs of their sweatshirts and pulled them apart. "We need to work together. Now apologize."

Gazzy groaned. "Sorry for snitching on you, Angel."

"Sorry for kicking your leg," Angel muttered. She turned her face up to me. "But, Max, we—"

The elevator stopped, its doors sliding open, and I was greeted to the same blindingly white hallway that I'd been "escorted" through three times before. I glanced down it, looking for any signs of life—walls dented from kicks, blood splattered on the floor, doors that might have been weakened from being slammed into. floor was as lifeless, as—well, an underground prison in a mad science laboratory in the middle of the Dead Mountains.

Nudge had been here, though, and I hadn't noticed. How many other mutants were locked behind doors that made them completely anonymous, just waiting to die?

Angel gasped. "Iggy!" She sprinted out of the elevator, towing me by the hand, stopping in front of **RHB01.11**.

I froze, my eyes locked on the black marks. Iggy had been one cell over from mine, for God knew how long, and I hadn't even noticed. I hadn't been able to help him, or break out. I put my jug of OJ down and slammed both hands against the door. "Iggy! Iggy, we're getting you out!"

Nothing.

Nudge reached past me to swipe her stolen keyboard, and the door swung open.

Iggy lunged at me, eyes narrowed and teeth bared. I threw my arms up in front of my face. His fist hit my elbow, sending me stumbling. I grabbed at his arm to steady myself. All I did was drag him down with me. We hit the ground hard. Before I could try to wriggle out from under him, he wrapped his hands around my throat and started squeezing.

I thrashed around, bucking and kicking, but I couldn't shake Iggy's grip on my neck. "Ig," I gasped, and reached up. His skin was fever-hot underneath my hands. His ears were practically burning. I got a good grip on them. And then I curled up hard, smashing our foreheads together. It felt bad. Not death-migraine bad, but bad.

But it worked. Iggy's fingers went slack. "Max? Oh, Jesus, I'm so sorry—" He scrambled off me. "Christ… I heard the door open and I thought…" He reached with shaky fingers for a cut on his forehead that had opened up.

Nudge tapped his shoulder. "Iggy…"

He spun to face her and ended up landing hard on his butt, his legs tangling with mine. "What the hell?"

She just stared at him, eyes wide, like she was a deer and he was a speeding van.

"We're breaking out," I told him. "We've got Angel and Gazzy."

"Hey, Iggy!" Gazzy shouted from down the hall, inside the elevator. "I missed you, also hurry up!"

Angel took a step forward. "Is a hug okay?"

Iggy didn't say anything, just spread his arms wide. Angel launched herself at him, wrapping her arms and wings around him so tightly I half-expected to hear ribs cracking. He squeezed her back, and I slugged him on the arm. I didn't trust myself to hug him, not just yet—I remembered the look on his face when he charged at me.

What did I look like when they had locked me up? When they had drugged me?

Angel flinched in Iggy's arms and wriggled free, her face somber again. I tapped her on the head. "Which cells are Fang and Ari in?"

She stood. Iggy and I scrambled to our feet. She brought a hand up to rub her temple, gnawing at her lip. After a moment she dropped her hand and shut her eyes, her forehead scrunching up. And then she opened her eyes.

"They're not here," she said, her voice hitching. "I don't know where they are!"

"What do you mean, you don't know where they are?" Iggy snapped. "They've got to be here _somewhere_!"

"Angel?" Gazzy called from the elevator. "Angel, what's wrong?"

I had to swallow a few times before I could even start to speak. "Okay. Three floors below us, six above us, and how many more above that? If Ari wasn't in the cage rooms then we can skip those, check the lower basements, check the testing rooms… recovery rooms…"

Iggy finished the thought. "Surgery rooms."

I picked up my jug of OJ and took a slug. It felt like blood in my mouth… wait, no, that was probably the _actual_ blood in my mouth. I swallowed it anyway and sighed. "Let's go, guys. We'll start with the lower basement levels." Delay any meetings with Erasers for as long as we could.

"Actually," Nudge said. "When… when the whitecoat talked to me… She said… she said that…"

"Spit it out," I said. "Come on."

Nudge frowned. "She said something about how I wasn't "like" something else, 'cause I was holding conversations. And then she had me moved from here to the fifth. So if I hadn't been talking they'd have put me, like, on a lower level. Fang and Ari probably just shut up their faces when they got caught…"

"…And got moved to the middle," Iggy said. "The sixth floor. Good job, Nudge, now let's go get 'em." He headed off to the elevator.

I grinned. "Nudge, you're a genius!"

Her shoulders hunched. "…Yeah." She slouched off, following Iggy.

Angel caught up to her before I could. "Was that why—"

"I don't want to talk about it!" Nudge shrugged her brown-black wings open and hugged herself with them.

I felt my stomach sinking as I followed them into the elevator. Sure, Nudge had done what she had done to get to me. And so far it had worked. But what had that whitecoat said to her to make her think that nearly killing herself was a good idea? What had they _done_?

Back in the elevator, the smell of dried blood overwhelmed me. But what made the stink worth it was seeing Iggy lift Gazzy up in a tight hug, Gazzy throwing his arms around Iggy's neck.

"I'm gonna murder every single Eraser that laid a hand on you or Angel or Ari," Gazzy said. "And then I'm gonna double-murder them for taking the bombs."

"Don't do anything _too_ reckless," Iggy said, but he still smiled. "Good job getting me, though. You kids are going places if you keep your heads on your shoulders."

I grinned too. The Gasman was a trooper—the way he watched out for his younger siblings reminded me of myself. And I'm a pretty serious fucking trooper. And now that home was gone, Ari and Angel would need all the help they could get.

"We'll all need help," Angel said. "But…"

"But what?"

"How do we know if we're getting the right kind?"

"If somebody's a whitecoat," I said, "they're the wrong kind. They blinded Iggy trying to 'help' him see better. They nearly killed us trying to 'help' us get stronger. The right kind… the right kind is like what I did for Ella, that girl back in Arizona, like how Dr. M and Jeb helped us. They were helping us because it was the right thing to do, not because they were sick freaks with a scalpel fetish."

Angel nodded, but Nudge's feathers rustled as she wrapped her wings tighter around herself. Iggy reached out and tapped one, but she just shrunk away, bumping into me.

Angel hit the button labeled **B6**. The elevator lurched into motion, and I was vibrating with nervous energy. Being enclosed with four other kids in a tiny metal cube stinking of blood was bad enough, and I wasn't exactly excited about the fight that was coming when all of us had to get out of the School. But more importantly—I was only a few moments away from Fang and Ari. I could tell Fang I was sorry, properly, to ask him if he was okay without having to cut myself short because there were whitecoats and Erasers in the room. I could let Ari know that I was here, that we were going to be okay, that Jeb might be dead but I wasn't planning on kicking the bucket—like, ever—and that we were going to get out of this, going to be okay, going to stick together…

The doors slid open with a _ding_. I grabbed the keycard from Nudge's hand and set off down the hallway toward the door separating me from the last few missing members of my family, stumbling a little because my stupid swelled-shut eye was messing with my depth perception.

I swiped the keycard and opened the door.

Fang was crouched in the corner, eyes narrowed, but when he saw me he stood and crossed the room in a few steps. For a second we just stood there. I more or less registered the pale yellow bruises on the right side of his face. He didn't seem to be holding himself oddly, which was good—no sprains that hadn't healed up. But my eyes kept going back to the smooth gray fabric that covered his chest.

I tore my focus away from it and met his gaze. He gave me a small nod and another sweep, going from my bad eye to my relocated wrist, which had started to bruise, finally lingering on the puncture scab on the inside of my elbow. Feeling him watching me was reminding me of exactly how much hell I felt like. Despite all the OJ I drank, I still was a wreck—which was complete bullshit, by the way, that stuff was supposed to boost your immune system—and Fang's steady stare wasn't helping. He was making me remember that I had a body. He was stopping me from pushing away the pain.

I just wanted it to stop. I stumbled forward, closing the gap between us, and wrapped my arms around him. Even as my eyes squeezed shut I could hear the sigh he let out, feel his fingers lightly combing through my hair. He pulled me closer to him with his free hand and we just… rocked. For a moment. It was nice.

And then I remembered that I had, like, responsibilities and shit. That there was a world outside of Fang's body heat and really, really good finger-combing. "Where's Ari?" I mumbled. "Gotta—gotta find him."

Fang's fingers stilled. And my heart skipped a beat.

* * *

 _It's only fair to give credit where credit is due._

 _The elevator-fight scene was partially inspired by Captain America: The Winter Soldier, insofar as I saw CA:TWS and thought "wow, an elevator sure is a place to have a fight scene!" It was really fun to work with characters who were caged in, trapped in a small space. It made things more physical. Aside from both fight scenes taking place in elevators, there isn't much similarity. Originally it had two Erasers, but then I realized that given Max and Nudge's current condition, it's lucky that they even survived one for as long as they did._

 _The blood-giving scene was in part inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road. In a previous draft, things were much closer to Unwind, because it was Gazzy who had done something to end up needing medical assistance. I'll let you guys use your imagination to fill in the blanks._

 _Iggy choking a ho was not cribbed from Mockingjay, except it kind of was… a friend and I were talking about the movie while or shortly before I was writing the chapter and she mentioned that the first one ended on Peeta choking a ho and it bled over here. Clearly, due to the heavy amount of foreshadowing and allusions to other works of media present in MRNB, this means that Iggy and Max are going to get straight married and have two children. You heard it here first, folks. ;-)_

 _I'm pretty sure that this borrowing makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I've said frequently how much I hate it when people write out scenes from movies, shots that work BECAUSE they're visual, etc. Or maybe it doesn't, because "just having a thing" in MRNB as a thing that's very separate from how it appears in its own canon… IDK. How about you guys tell me how you felt about these things?_


	30. Revelation

_The following chapters, until stated otherwise, are unbetad. I would, however, like to give a quick shoutout to Grits for making the ending of this chapter not awful. Thank you, Grits. You are as smart as you are beautiful._

* * *

I pulled out of Fang's arms, my blood running cold. "Where's Ari, Fang?"

He met my gaze. Hesitated. Dropped his eyes. I did my best to hold his gaze, hating every single hair of the two inches he had on me. If Ari was somewhere, beaten up or half-dead or… or being experimented on, I needed to hear it.

Before I could repeat my question for a third time, somebody crashed through the door, effectively killing whatever moment we might have been having.

"Fang? Angel said you were here? Are you okay, man?" Iggy was staring at one of the many spots in the room where Fang wasn't.

Fang started and reached out to Iggy's forehead. His fingertips came away bloody. "Who did that to you?" His voice was just as steely as I remembered—just as steely as mine could get.

Iggy snorted and ducked his head, shoving his hands into his sweatpant pockets. "I did. Tackled Max when she came to get me. Wasn't thinking much. It looks worse than it feels."

"Looks like shit," Fang said, as poetic as usual, just as the younger set of kids entered the room.

"Don't _swear_ , Fang," Gazzy said. "Max doesn't like it."

"Max swears in her head, though," Angel said. "So it's fine."

I sighed. I could have a talk with Angel about appropriate language later—when we got the righteous fuck out of this place. Speaking of which… "Where's Ari?"

Fang froze up again, his teeth grinding.

"Come on, Fang, it isn't that hard," Iggy snapped. "Is he sleeping or something?"

Fang swallowed audibly.

"Did they hurt him?" Gazzy asked, his voice shaking. "I'll—I'll kill 'em."

Fang shook his head and opened his mouth; closed it.

Nudge folded her arms over her stomach and bowed her head as she paced toward the far end of the room. Whatever was coming, she didn't want to hear it. I couldn't blame her. Ari, even though he didn't have wings, was family. Fang was as tough as a rock and even he didn't want to say it.

Angel started, looking like she had been kicked in the gut. She was missing a sneaker. Why was she missing a sneaker? I stared at her sock foot like it would stop what was happening. "Fang…" her voice trailed off and she looked away.

Fang looked me straight in the eye, blocking out the rest of the Flock. "Ari's an Eraser."

It might have only been yesterday, but it felt like a million years ago—that moment when Iggy, bruised and bloody, had said three words that shook my world off of its base. And now here was Fang, doing the exact same thing. The shock from the first time must have worn off, because I could pull up the words now that I couldn't then.

"No he's not," I said. Ari and Angel were my babies—Ari less so, but he was always dogging my heels or running around with Iggy. He wasn't an Eraser. He wasn't a monster that wanted to hurt us. He was a scared kid, locked in a dog crate or a cell somewhere, staring at the world around him with eyes that always seemed too big for his face. And if they hadn't been feeding him right, which was all too likely, his face would be gaunt, and he'd look even less human. He'd be bruised too. He'd gotten hit hard during that fight. I could see the marks, some fresh and inky-looking, markers of times when he had tried to be tough, the ones from Saturday faded to the color of dying leaves. I could see his shoulders shaking and his fingers twitching, tired of curling into fists but not knowing anything else. I could see his eyes darting around, catching on particularly horrifying sights. He was just beyond my reach. I had to find him. He couldn't be…

"No," I said again. "He's not." I had to tell Fang that. He had to know.

Fang blinked. "Max—"

I glared. "Ari is _fine_. We're going to get him and then we're going to get the hell out of dodge, and then we're going to go back h—"

"He's telling the truth, Max," Angel said. I'd never heard a six-year-old sound so dead. "But we need to—"

"Find him," Iggy said. "We find him."

"He wouldn't just turn traitor," Gazzy insisted. "He's my friend. He's my _brother_."

"And Jeb _was_ our dad," Angel said. "But now he's dead." She let out a gasp, and it was that gasp that cut me to the bone. I staggered back and sagged against the wall, the weight of what Fang said hitting me like a sucker punch. It hit her, too—her hand flew up to cover her mouth. But she didn't stop talking. "Fang's not lying, I saw it in his mind…"

"But it doesn't make sense," Nudge said. She tugged on a strand of hair like she was trying to wake herself up.

"How would they have done it, anyway?" Iggy demanded.

Fang just shrugged.

"Maybe you were drugged," I said. I couldn't admit to the screaming pain of the headaches now, in front of the kids, but we all knew it wouldn't be beyond the School to pump us full of hallucinogens to keep us docile. And Iggy might not even have been on anything and he had still lunged at me, mistaking me for an Eraser. Fang could have woken up from a nightmare to see Ari's face mixed with an Eraser's.

Fang shook his head. "I know what I saw," he said. "Do you want me to tell you that he's dead? That I saw the body?"

I heard my breath rasping before I realized that I was halfway to a panic attack. The world felt like it was crashing down. First Jeb. Then my head. Then Nudge. Then Iggy. Now this. When would it end? When would we finally be out of the School's reach? I had to get out of here. I had to see for myself what they had done to Ari, I had to keep my family safe…

"They didn't have to." Nudge's voice came out hollow, slow, and a bit slurred.

"So they _didn't_!" Iggy said, putting a hand on her shoulder and shaking her. "Come on, snap out of it, they _didn't_!"

"They did too!" Angel snapped. "Why don't you get it?"

I didn't hear what Iggy said back, if he said anything, because Fang had leaned in close, eyes narrowed. I didn't hear what he said so much as saw his lips move.

"He knew—" And then he jerked his chin downward, indicating his chest. I stared at the scratchy gray fabric, knowing what lay underneath. Knowing that Ari knew what lay underneath. My hands felt cold.

"You're sure?"

A nod.

I swallowed, my heart pounding in my throat. The boy—the little boy of my memories, the frightened face in the helicopter, the hand in mine in the middle of the night, the arms windmilling their way through empty air—was gone. Ari was gone. Whatever was left of him was a badly graffiti'd tombstone.

"How bad was he?"

Fang hesitated for a moment, and I saw the answer written in the press of his lips, the way his eyes went from obsidian to flint. He looked like the E-shaped house when it was boarded up against blizzards—isolated and closed off. I put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry." I held up my jug of orange juice, offering sympathy in the earliest way I had learned. Fang put a hand on it, his fingers brushing mine, and took a sip.

"Thanks."

I couldn't look him in the eye. I settled for his shoulder. "Don't mention it."

Iggy's voice, loud and forceful, broke the moment between the two of us. "And if you did it before, you can do it again. It won't be that hard—if _half_ of what Nudge says is true, this place is littered with stuff we can weaponize. We'll—"

My legs were steel-sure as I crossed the room. "Iggy." I hunted for a way to break it to him, but I guess I didn't need to. His muscles tensed and his mouth twisted.

"I'm gonna be sick," he rasped.

I swallowed. Time to be a leader, I told myself. Time to step up to the plate and make the tough choices. The rest of my Flock was in no fit state to go on, but I had to. I had to keep us together. "Don't you dare puke on me, asshole," I said. "We still have to save our own skins. Now—"

Wait. The six of us were all in the room.

I turned tail, tossed my container of OJ away, and sprinted for the elevator, hoping against hope…

A white canvas sneaker was pressed firmly in the gap between the elevator and the actual floor. The elevator door, in the process of closing, slid back after coming within an inch of this rubber-soled life saver. I let out a half-frantic sob of relief as Angel came up behind me.

"I thought…" she trailed off. "I thought we'd have to look for them. For a while." She wiggled the shoe out of the gap and slipped it on.

The others filed in and I kept my finger on the door open button. "Okay," I said. "We're going to get out of here. There are going to be…" I swallowed and shifted. My bad shoulder jarred. "A lot of Erasers. More than we can handle. We…" Another hard truth. "We can't outfight them. We tried that before and it didn't work. And now we're in an even worse state."

"We have to outrun them," Iggy said. "Just keep going. Head for the windows. It'll be easier if we split up. But…"

Nudge was leaning against the wall, looking like death. Gazzy and Angel were pint-sized badasses, emphasis on the _pint-sized_. Iggy was blind and still a good bit feral. And I was in the worst shape of my life—who knew when another headache would start up and knock me out?

"We'll _team_ up," Angel said.

Iggy brightened. "Yeah!"

"I'll go with Iggy," Gazzy offered. He frowned. "And Angel. And Nudge."

"No," I said. "I need you with me. Angel, you help Iggy. Fang, Nudge." Fang was, physically speaking, the best off out of all of us. Nudge was about three steps and a jump away from bleeding out. I'd need Gazzy to lean on, and Angel could use her mind-reading powers to help Iggy know where Erasers were.

I hit the door close button and smeared my hand over all the aboveground floors. The doors slid shut and we were lurching up. Adrenaline started humming in my veins again, making my world jumpy-clear.

"What if they have _guns_? Like on Saturday?" Angel said. She tugged on my hand. "Max! What if they have—"

"They won't," Nudge said.

Now Gazzy was panicking too. "But what if they—"

"They won't," Nudge repeated. She wrapped her wings tighter around herself. "I'm sure."

Another bout of curiosity nearly distracted me from the mission at hand, and I had to yank myself back to focus. I couldn't feel pain, not really, just a throbbing in my shoulder and a couple of splotches along my legs and torso that I _knew_ were bruising, and my bad right eye. My neck felt odd, though, and twisting my head made it feel even odder. I swallowed and watched the doors slide open.

There were ten Erasers around it.

I didn't think, just acted—I grabbed Gazzy's shoulder and threw him, getting him as high as I could manage. A couple of Erasers grabbed at him, and Fang took advantage of their distraction to start elbowing his way through. I shoved Nudge right behind him, Angel behind her, and charged.

Distracted, the Erasers were easier to deal with. I tucked my head down and moved with my elbows, slamming my way to the nearest hallway. Once I was free of them I whistled. "Gazzy!"

His sneakers hit the floor behind me before his name was all the way out of my mouth. I grabbed his hand and we were off, tipping over as many IV stands and carts as we could. The hallways were devoid of whitecoats—they must have cleared out when we were downstairs. I let a half-formed thought cross my mind. Maybe, just maybe, this wouldn't be awful. We were coming up on a half-opened set of doors. If the sign on them was any indication, they were to a lower level of an operating theater. The theater was the last room in the hallway, and there was a cart parked outside of it, full of various shiny metal objects used to torture kids like me.

I grabbed a scalpel on my way past the cart and made a fist around it.

That scalpel saved my life.

An Eraser lunged out of the theater and tackled me, ripping my hand out of Gazzy's. "Go!" I screamed, and flailed at the monster on top of me. Blind animal panic took over for an instant as I thrashed underneath it, trying to get free even as another held my legs down.

It wasn't until the blood hit my face that I realized I'd slashed its throat open. The world came back into horrifying focus as I stared at the skin that had peeled away from the gaping wound. It looked a bit like an open mouth. I'd never been this close to death before.

And then the weight on my legs shifted. The other Eraser grabbed the dead one and started shaking it, yelling at it—I couldn't make out the words. I got an elbow into the dead weight above me and got it off me, twisted, got my feet underneath me, and started running. Gazzy hadn't gone far and he wasn't going too fast, either. We fell in stride, powering down the hallway. A siren started blaring, and I took that as a good sign—one of the others had done something. They hadn't gotten caught.

"Do you think," Gazzy panted, "that Ari's really…"

"Yeah." I sped up. If he could talk, he could run. If he could talk about _that_ , he could run faster.

And he could. We hit the end of the hallway and headed left. There had to be a window somewhere.

There wasn't, but we came across the next-best thing—a half-finished hallway, covered with dropcloths and reeking of paint. In some places the wall was little more than white paint over plywood. I started kicking, and memories of waking up in my cell came flooding back.

I kicked harder. The wall shattered, finally, and I had my first clear view of the outside world in God knew how long. I couldn't savor it for too long, though—I heard pounding boots and knew Erasers were coming. I put the scalpel in my mouth and bit down on it, set my hands on the splintered plywood, and yanked. When I stumbled back Gazzy grabbed me around the waist. He was just strong enough to stop me from hitting the floor. We stumbled for a moment before he pulled away.

I blinked and stood up straight, staring at the hole I had made. It was a good four feet long and a slightly less good three feet tall, but it would do. I shoved Gazzy out first and ducked under it myself, getting myself a mouthful of scrub bush and a faceful of scratchy twigs for my troubles.

The pounding boots were getting closer. "Get in the air!" I shouted.

Gazzy froze, his eyes wide. "But we're—"

"Get in the air!" My voice broke. "Do it _now_!"

Gazzy managed a U-'n'-A, leaping a meter and a half into the air and spreading his wings wide. I had to duck to avoid getting clipped with his downstroke, and it took an awful faltering moment before he could get far away enough from the School to steady himself in the air. I kept my eyes on him as I fought my way out of the bush and into the narrow strip of clear land beyond it, leaping up myself. My first downstroke just barely missed the ground; my second upstroke whacked both of my wings against the School.

I could feel the delicate bones in my wings grinding against each other, and I shrieked. A window popped open and a wolfy face leaned out of it. I beat my wings faster, caught up to Gazzy.

"We did it!" I called out. It came out muffled, and not only because I had shouted my vocal cords within an inch of their lives. I still had the scalpel in my mouth, and I couldn't exactly hold the small metal knife—my hands were full of splinters.

He turned around clumsily. "We did it!" And he pointed up. Iggy and Angel were a couple hundred feet above us. We headed up, managed to form something resembling a huddle. If we hadn't spent years timing our upstrokes and downstrokes, it would have been impossible, and for a second gratitude for Jeb—for getting us out, for teaching us how to get ourselves out—choked me. Not the time, Maximum, I reminded myself. Not the goddamn time. Again I had to force myself to focus, which was a lot harder with victory, pure and clean and _light_ , flooding my veins. I wanted to scream and dance and pick up Gazzy and Angel and hug Iggy and—

"Max!" There was smeared blood all over the right side of Angel's face, but it didn't seem to be what was bothering her. "Max, we need to go to—" She froze, her eyes going dinner-plate wide, and then flapped up higher, jostling Iggy and Gazzy out of the way. I ignored their protests in favor of joining her, following her gaze. What I saw made me miss half a downstroke and I dropped a few feet.

The other two members of my Flock, one carrying the other, were flying up from the far side of the School. I blinked, trying to focus with my heart in my throat. I couldn't for long—the helicopter on the roof started up, its blades whirling, and blocked my view.

Angel turned to me. Under the blood, she had gone bone white. "Fang needs help!"

I shot into motion before she finished talking. Flapping hard enough to throw her off-balance, I headed back to the School. Erasers had gathered on the roof. I pushed down hard to soar above them, and did the same to clear the helicopter. Halfway over it, I toed off a sneaker. It fell in lazy loops until hit the blades.

The helicopter veered off course, smashing into the roof. I didn't see it—I was past it—but I heard the crash, followed by panicked shouts and pained screams. I didn't turn back. Shrapnel shrieked past me and I did my best to dodge it. I couldn't get knocked out now, not when we had come so far. I set my sights on my family and kept going.

Fang was just a few feet ahead, and I caught up to him with a few fast flaps. He had his arms under Nudge's armpits, trying his hardest to haul her up. One of his wings clipped me, and I leaned back fast so it didn't happen again. He didn't notice me, and I couldn't blame him—Nudge was a good two-thirds of his body weight. Sweat was running down his face—and blood down hers. There was a nasty gash across her forehead and a set of clawmarks on her left side.

I swooped in. "Is she okay?" The scalpel dropped.

Fang's eyes darted to mine. He nodded. This must have been enough to break his concentration, because as soon as he did he dropped like a rock. I shot into motion, folding my wings and falling fast enough to grab Nudge's feet. I flapped hard, pushing the three of us up from underneath. We gained a couple dozen feet before Fang got wind of what I was trying to do, and then he shifted Nudge further down so the two of us were more or less holding the same amount of her weight. It also meant that his sneakers were bumping the top of my head on just about every downstroke and that my mouth was full of Nudge's sweatpants, which only got worse when she came to and unfurled her wings, trying to fly on her own.

"No!" I shouted. She was already weak enough. I didn't need her falling out of the air trying to be tough.

We caught up with the others and headed off. I kept throwing glances over my shoulder but all I saw was the white building with black smoke billowing off of the roof. And after a few minutes, the smoke stopped. What was left of the helicopter looked like a giant black bug that had been crushed underfoot. Which, well—wasn't completely wrong.

A breeze blew blood straight into my face. I sputtered and cursed before realizing what that meant—Nudge wasn't getting any better. We needed to land.


	31. Realization

"Angel! Find us someplace where there aren't people!"

I don't know how long it took for her to do that. I don't even know what state we were in when she did. All I could focus on was how _tired_ I was. It seemed every single bit of muscle tissue I had had started screaming at me to give up, to drop down to the ground. Nudge's legs felt like iron bars. Fang's feet could have been made of stone, and every time they hit me in the head it felt like those awful hours in my cell all over again. My hands, full of splinters, were screaming in agony. A couple of times I fell—a couple of times Fang did. But finally the six of us landed in the desert.

I rolled Nudge onto her back to try to look at her. She was… it was bad. The cuts on her hip had mostly clotted up, and there wasn't any fresh blood running down her hands, but the clawmark on her head was still bleeding sluggishly. Blood dripped off of her chin onto her neck, sliding down her nose and cheekbones in sheets. Thanks to the early-morning sunlight her skin looked purple with it. If it had been me, I wouldn't have worried. Head wounds _always_ bled a lot. But Nudge had lost way too much blood to shrug this off, no matter how shallow it was.

"Iggy, her forehead…" He knelt by her side before I finished speaking, running his fingers over the cut.

"Take your shirt off," he said brusquely. "Tear it into strips."

I did just that, yanking out splinters as I went along. When I was done I handed the strips to Iggy and forced my head, which felt like a hundred-pound weight, up. To keep myself sharp I tried to focus on Nudge. Gazzy was pressing a wad of T-shirt against her forehead while Iggy bound it up with long strips. Her mouth moved and Iggy nodded once. He turned so he was more or less face-to-face with me. "She has a cannula around her wrist," he told me. "Clear tube, needles. I need you to hook her up to it and…" He hesitated. "Okay, who _isn't_ beat to shit?"

I glanced around. Gazzy and Angel were the obvious choices—I couldn't see anything on them that was worse than bruises and Eraser blood. But Angel was retching into the sand, eyes screwed shut. I had already dropped enough blood to make me woozy, so that left…

"Fang? You okay?" He was curled up a couple of feet away from where he had landed, hands over his stomach, but when I called for him he headed over. Aside from a split lip, he looked alright. He even grunted. "Come on," I told him.

I led him over to Nudge's right side—Iggy was still working on her left. I unwrapped the cannula and wiped off the needles on the cleanest part of my sweatpants with sleep-shaky fingers.

"Put it in his arm first," Iggy said, not turning away from his wrapping.

Nudge shifted at the sound of his voice. "No—no, I'm…"

I shushed her as Fang rolled up his sleeve. When he was done, I stuck a needle in the crook of his elbow. Nothing. I yanked it out, ignoring his wince, and tried again, this time hitting a vein. His blood started running down the tube. "Got it," I told Iggy.

"Hold it up," he said, and I scrambled to do just that. My right eye throbbed and the little plastic tube had never seemed so slippery. But I got it into the air and held it until it was full of Fang's blood.

I didn't need Iggy's direction for the next bit. I pushed down the top of the sheet strips wrapped around Nudge's lower arm and stuck her with the other needle. She blinked her eyes open and stared at me.

"'M sorry," she mumbled. "Y' should… should have left me."

"What," I said. She had said something, but the meaning hadn't sunk in. The aching behind my eyes started up. To distract myself from it, I started de-splintering my hands.

"I said…" This time the words were more audible. "You should have left me."

I could have strangled her. "Nobody's getting left behind," I said. "I swear to God, Nudge—"

"We left _Ari_ behind," Gazzy said.

I swallowed hard. My mouth felt like it had been stuffed full of cotton balls, and my head felt like somebody was playing the drums inside of it. And let's not even get _started_ on how the rest of me felt, 'cause we'd be here all week. "Yeah," I said, willing my voice not to break. "We did. 'Cause he's evil." Angel sat down by my side and I started, but she just rested her head against my arm and closed her eyes. I wrapped a wing around her and kept going. "We didn't leave him behind. He left us behind. He's an Eraser, Gaz. Like the thing that tried to kill me in the hallway. Do you think something like that… do you think something like that wants to watch movies with you? Do you think it cares about Angel's birthday? Do you think it wants to have a water balloon fight?"

"But—" Gazzy started.

I cut him off. "No." When his face crumpled, something inside my chest did the same. I didn't want to be the one to rain on his parade—I wanted to cry about Ari's death as much as he wanted to believe that his little brother was just out of reach. But if I started crying, it would be the ultimate weakness. We'd all break down. I'd never seen Jeb cry. "Gazzy… do you want to believe that he's dead, instead? Would that make it hurt less? To think that he just wasn't tough enough?"

"He always sucked at hand-to-hand," Angel said, and wiped at a runny nose. She had finished retching, and settled by my side. I smoothed her hair, fighting back tears.

"I guess," Gazzy muttered.

I made my voice as strong as I could. Harsh, but not biting. Kind, but not soft. I came out sounding strangled more than anything. "Well, then think that he is. And that whatever Eraser is around… wearing his face or a bad impersonation of it… that's what killed him. And it's gonna kill you if it gets the chance." I didn't add the part about how it would enjoy it. Erasers always had a savage, wolfish sort of pleasure when it came to killing. They ate the corpses. Sometimes. Maybe even always, if you counted out mutants who died of contagious stuff. Maybe it would help drive the point home, but I couldn't bring myself to tell Gazzy that when I was his age, my birthday present was a half-second glimpse of an Eraser burying its face into the savaged torso of a mutant that was still twitching.

Gazzy's hands shook. "I hate him," he muttered. "After everything we did for him…"

I reached out with a wing and tapped his shoulder. "I know." Fang put his free hand on my knee and squeezed, and I leaned my head against his shoulder.

"We've still got each other," Iggy said. "Whatever that's worth."

I didn't say: _But what_ else _do we have?_ The Flock didn't need me, the leader, being the Debbie Downer. But it was the truth—all we had was the ragged and bloodstained clothing we were wearing. No home to go back to, no food to eat, no money to get either of the former… we could survive in the woods, if we had the supplies, but we didn't. How long would it take for the Erasers to find us and drag us back to the School? Would we starve to death before that? What were we going to do? Where were we going to go?

"New York City," Angel muttered sleepily, and shifted against me. I froze.

"Angel, was that an answer, or are you just…"

"We're supposed to go to New York City," Angel said. She yawned.

I tapped her on the head and she twisted to face me. "Um," I said, trying to think straight. "How… how do you know this, sweetie?"

"I heard about it in the School," Angel said. "There's a place in New York City that we're supposed to go to." She hesitated, and then recited an address the same way a littler kid would recite the alphabet. "Four-three-three East Thirty-First Street. We're supposed to go there."

Iggy blinked. "What do you mean, _supposed_? We're supposed to fly across the entire damn country with nothing but the clothes on our backs? We're supposed to blunder into another trap? We're supposed to almost _die_ getting out? What are we going to do, have another wacky and completely pointless adventure and get locked up in Hell?" He was brutally bitter, and Angel flinched.

I glared. His tone was really not helping the headache that had decided to start up. And it wasn't helping the younger three, who needed something to hold on to. "Do you have any better ideas, Mister Genius?" I snapped.

"Yeah," Iggy said. "We find an abandoned house and we hunker down and prep like crazy."

Gazzy looked from Iggy, to me, to Angel, to Nudge before speaking. "I'm in," he said, sounding more apologetic than excited.

"'M not," Nudge mumbled. She pushed herself up onto her elbows and squinted at Angel and me. "I think we should go to New York."

"Alright!" Angel said. Then she hesitated. "Why?"

Nudge frowned. "I just _do_. Screw off."

I forced down a slow and hazy-red wave of pain that hit my head hard. "We don't have to go to this place," I said. "But New York City doesn't sound too bad." The further away we got from the School, the less likely I'd be to fly back, to try to find Ari one last time. I trusted Fang with my life. And I believed him. Especially after he told me about his chest. But it was like knowing that I shouldn't scratch a mosquito bite, and then going ahead and scratching it anyway.

Iggy sighed. "Fang, can you at least tie the vote?"

Fang looked at him and didn't say anything for a long moment. Finally he gave a one-shouldered shrug. "I'm with Max," he said.

Boo-yah.

"Come on!" Iggy protested. Clearly he'd never heard of _losing gracefully_.

Fang shrugged again. "If we're in a big city, we can hide," he said. "Like Max said. We don't have to go anywhere."

"Yeah," Iggy muttered. "Aside from _across the country_. Does that not mean anything to you people? It's not a day trip!"

"We'll manage," I said, and went to pick up my sweatshirt. The sun had come up fully while we were hooking Nudge up and arguing. The undershirt I had on covered my chest but not my arms. While I normally didn't burn, I didn't want to risk it.

Iggy sighed. "Fine." He stood and stretched, and for a second I thought he was about to take off, right then and there. My hands balled into fists and I got ready to shout, not caring that it would wreck the fragile balance I'd set up to stop my headache from getting out of control. But he didn't. He just scratched the back of his neck and brushed sand off of his pants before turning to Angel. "Where's the nearest town? If we're going to do this, we might as well do this prepared."

Angel squinted for a moment and then pointed. "That way."

After a long moment, Iggy said, "Um, which way?"

I stifled a snort.

"North," Angel said patiently. "About twenty minutes from here. By the time you get there…" She tilted her head for a second. "…Yeah, by the time we get there people'll be at work."

Iggy nodded. "Okay. Fang, take the needles out after fifteen minutes, tops."

I sat down back next to Nudge. "Gazzy," I said, forcing the words out. "You go with him. Angel, stay here. If an Eraser shows up, brain it and let Iggy know. Fang, keep watch."

And then I let my good eye slide shut. Dozing off was easier than it had been after a nightmare back home. The adrenaline had worn off and now my body was one huge bruise, and just letting it hurt was the most weirdly soothing thing. I sunk into unconsciousness with the same grace that Angel had when she was gliding through the air.

Waking up was harder. Slowly I became more aware of the voices, rising and falling, the crinkling of plastic, the aching in my stomach and the dryness in my mouth, and…

The feeling of fingers in my hair?

I blinked my eyes open to see that my head was in Fang's lap. He was braiding my hair. Behind him, the sun was just about in the middle of the sky. And even though the situations weren't anywhere near the same, some half-remembered dream voice whispered in my mind—

 _You're beautiful like this_.

Whatever that was supposed to mean. Fang's face was as stonewallish as usual, but his eyes had little crinkles around them—like he was smiling, but not with his mouth. When he saw I was awake, he untangled his fingers from my hair and leaned back so I could sit up.

Upright, I put a hand against my hair. The braids were more than I could have done on my own. They'd keep my hair out of my face better than my slapdash ones could.

I could feel myself blushing. Which made no sense, because I didn't have anything to blush _about_. It was just that Fang's fingers felt really nice, and he was warm and solid, and I could stay like this for—

I sat up. Swallowed. "Thanks," I mumbled. And then I blinked. He was wearing jeans. A quick glance around showed that the other members of my Flock had changed out of their awful sweats and into a variety of clothes. Gazzy even had a raincoat tied around his waist. "Okay," I said, and folded my arms across my chest. Here was something I could deal with like a leader. "Just how much did you steal?"

At the sound of my voice, Iggy turned and tossed a large plastic bag into my lap. It was knotted at the top so I ripped it open, revealing a pair of grape-flavored-cough-syrup colored sweats, a couple of bottles of Gatorade, and what looked to be close to ten apples. As I pulled the sweats out, not quite believing what I was seeing, a few tins of sardines and a box of wet wipes fell out.

I shooed Fang away so I could scramble out of my old sweats and into my new ones. They looked like they had been designed for an Eraser, and wearing them was like wearing garbage bags on my legs. Did humans get this big? There was an equally oversized folded-up black T-shirt in the left leg. Not the _ideal_ way to cover up my wings, but it'd do in a pinch. I rolled it into a rope and knotted it around my waist. Now I fit in with Iggy and Fang and their bathrobe-belted jeans.

Nudge, sitting on the ground and looking much less dead than she had a few short hours ago, had gotten the best end of the deal. She'd manage to switch out her gray sweats for jeans and a turtleneck oversized enough to cover her hands. Another one was knotted around her waist, and she was sitting on it as she shoveled cold canned soup into her face.

I took a bite out of an apple. That bite turned into another, and another, as I realized just how hungry I was. About halfway through the bag, I remembered that I had asked a question.

"Just how much," I said again, "Did you steal?"

"We left notes!" Gazzy said, his blue eyes as earnest and trustworthy as they could get. It was the same look he'd gotten when he had dismantled the T.V. "just to see how it worked". I groaned.

"Not much," Iggy was quick to reassure me. "Just clothes, food…" He hesitated. "Some money… We're not rolling in dough, but we can buy ourselves a couple of pizzas when we land next."

Fang shrugged. "Sounds good."

I sighed. "Alright, let's get this show on the road." I bundled up the remaining food and took a running leap into the air, beating my wings powerfully to get airborne. The others followed, and without much thought we formed the V that we'd always flown in—me leading, Fang on my right and Iggy on my left, with Nudge and Gazzy trailing Iggy and Angel behind Fang.

It was a relief to be in the air, to focus on nothing but the endless blue sky and the feeling of my wings working, to lose all conscious thought in favor of the old rhythm of wingbeats. I didn't have to worry about Erasers trailing us. I didn't have to think about Ari.

We didn't go half as long or as fast as we should have, and I spent the majority of the flight glancing down, certain that any second a van would pull up and Erasers would scramble out of it to start shooting at us. We were going slowly enough for them to draw a decent bead, too. But we were all battered. Fang and Iggy had both done their best to top Nudge up but hadn't quite succeeded, leaving the three of them shaky in the air. I was still fighting a headache and the ache in my shoulder would flare up if I were even a hair off-balance. Out of all of us, Gazzy and Angel were in the best shape, and they weren't used to long flights. Every mile the six of us gained was a mile we had to claw our way through. If we were running, we'd be dragging ourselves by our fingernails.

We landed earlier than I would have liked—which, admittedly, was never. But we managed to make it just past sunset. We landed in a spot of woods far away enough from the highway that nobody could think "those are some really big, awkward birds", but close enough so we'd have an idea of where to head the next morning. In the little patch of trees we'd hunkered down in, the sound of the highway was inescapable. It didn't stop everybody from passing out moments after their feet hit the dirt, though, and I couldn't blame them. We'd had a long day. If it weren't for my nap earlier, I'd have joined them, but as things stood it was just me, the trees, and…

Nudge? I blinked. She was sitting up straight, but from the way her head was down I thought she'd been sleeping. Guess not.

"Get some sleep," I said gently.

She shook her head. The anger that she managed to put into that motion surprised me. What had happened to her?

"Look," I started. "Nudge—"

"I don't want to talk about it," she said.

"We got out, though," I told her. "We're fine. We're here, and we're going to be okay." We were. We had to be.

She just shrugged. "I'll take first watch." Like this was nothing more than a camping trip and the biggest thing we had to worry about were wild animals.

But at this point I was too exhausted to argue.

The trees in this area were tiny, but there were enough of them for me to storm off into the forest. I stomped my way to the nearest clearing—a ragged, sandy oblong—parked my ass on the ground, and stared at the sky. It was hard to see the stars this close to the highway. Back at home—

Back at home I could stare at them whenever I wanted, and Ari had been there, and one time Jeb made all of us hot chocolate and pointed out the constellations…

A ragged sob ripped its way out of my throat, and I buried my face in my hands. I couldn't cry. I _couldn't_.

But I did. Long, gasping sobs had me clutching at my chest, feeling like I was bruising all of my ribs at once, and hot tears ran down my face. When it seemed to be over I tried scrubbing at myself with a wet wipe but it only aggravated my eyes and made me tear up more, and then I started crying again, because Jeb had always had those fancy-ass tissues around the house…

I kept crying and I couldn't see anything, kept crying and it felt like the world had narrowed to me and the empty sky and every single thing that the School had taken away from me.

Somebody put a hand on my shoulder and I spun around, trying to stand my own but ending up tripping over my own feet and hitting the ground hard.

"It's me," Fang said softly, and before I could cover my face and order him to get away he was kneeling next to me, holding onto me. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his shoulder. His hands were shaking, but steadied when I held them. When I pulled back, his eyes were glimmering, and there was a silvery trail running down his face.

"This sucks." My voice came out rough and quavering and I hated it, hated myself for being so weak.

Fang wiped away a tear track on my face and nodded.

I got my legs under me and sat up properly. Sitting face-to-face with Fang, alone like this, with nobody watching us but the moon and stars…

It felt like I was in a closet, a really warm one, instead of being in the desert at night. Why? What was… what had changed?

"We're on our own now," Fang said.

Something about hearing him say the incredibly obvious made it easier for me to spill the beans. "I try so hard, Fang. And then it just… hits me." I rubbed at my face with the already-filthy cuff of my sweatshirt, getting a noseful of sand for my troubles. "No Jeb. No home. No Ari." I hesitated. Swallowed. "I wish you had killed him," I said, and my voice sounded high and silvery. "I wish I could just see the body, so I don't have to cry about the sweet kid that followed me around. But at the same time, if I was in your shoes…"

Could I have killed Ari? If he was an Eraser and I saw him and he knew about this awful sobfest and let me know he knew, could I kill him?

Hopefully I'd never have to find out.

"This sucks," Fang said. "But you're tough. Tougher than me." He hesitated, and a smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "If you tell Iggy I said that then I'd have to kill you."

I let out a shaky laugh.

"You're the toughest out of all of us," Fang said. "You keep trucking."

I gestured at my face. "If this is what you call _trucking_ ," I started, but he shook his head.

"You really don't get it, do you?" Our faces were close enough for me to smell the oranges he must have been eating earlier, and his eyes were dark and serious. I didn't want to look away, even if I didn't actually get whatever "it" was. I could hear his heart, going just a bit faster because of the blood he'd lost earlier. And he could hear mine. Even though he'd pulled one hand free to wipe at tear tracks, the other was still entwined with mine. The space between me and him felt both like a huge canyon and a hairs-breadth, and if I just leaned forward I could close it and—

And—

"Why don't you tell me?" I asked. Getting the words out was hard—my throat had chosen the worst moment to seize up. And as soon as they were out, I regretted them, because Fang shook his head and leaned back.

Whatever had been happening stopped, and his eyes slid to a point just to the left of mine. He pulled his hand free.

"I'll wait up for you," he said, and headed back. Leaving me alone with the pounding in my chest and the silent judgment of the moon for the thoughts I couldn't deny, because it was me that was having them. I could run from Erasers, I could stand my ground against whitecoats, I could lead the Flock through fights and to freedom, but there wasn't a damn thing I could do against headaches or wanting to…

Wanting to kiss Fang.

He was my right-wing man. He'd always been there for me, he'd always had my back and I'd always returned the favor, he let me drink his coffee, he told me I'd be a good leader, he braided my hair so it stayed out of my face when I was flying, he tried to warn me that going into the School was a bad idea…

And I'd known him since I was _four_. He was a part of my family the same way Iggy and Nudge were.

I let out a groan and flopped onto my back, ignoring how uncomfortable my wings felt, and stared up at the stars. They were so far off, and cold and bright at the same time, and they'd been the first things I'd seen when Jeb had busted all of us out of the School. I'd been holding Angel, with Ari toddling alongside. When I had seen the stars it was like the world had fallen away, and I had taken a step forward and another, ready to jump up into the night sky, and Fang had held my hand to keep me grounded. And now Jeb was dead and Ari was evil and Fang…

He had been holding my hand. I couldn't focus on anything but that.

I let out a groan.

Nothing made sense anymore.

* * *

 _A few quick notes:_

 _Frankly I'm quite proud of the fact that it took the Flock three chapters to get out of the School. A big part of the School's menace is their ability to imprison these kids, and to do so efficiently, and in canon when birds swoop in and save the day, dramatic effect is lost._

 _Something I'm a little less proud of is how sudden the NYC thing comes up. The decision to have NYC as part of the plot was one I made in the past, and when I realized the error of my mistake, it was too late to fix. I hope the minimal setup of Angel wanting to tell Max was good enough, though. Additionally, it is not going to be another 100k words of the Flock going to various places with little to no real connection ( jp what's good). We're approaching endgame. NYC is going to have a bearing on future fics, and hopefully resolve in a good way the plot of TNTS._

 _Something I am both proud and ashamed of is the super anime near-kiss between Fang and Max. It is so melodramatic and over the top. I am truly flexing my literary muscles here._


	32. Changing Hands

_Thanks as always to Tokoloshe Monster for her beta-reading skills. However, this is the last chapter that she read for._

* * *

Wendy walked briskly through the still-chaotic halls of the School, her arms steady at her sides. Nobody looked at her. Nobody noticed her. Not unless she wanted them to. She could feel a ball of energy growing inside her, light crackling behind her eyeballs and bubbling up in her mouth. She was strong, she was powerful, and she was only getting better. It was like the tank and the arrival of the bird-kids had woken something up inside of her. Now it was growing, her powers getting stronger and stronger. And for the first time in forever, she knew what to do with them. She knew what she wanted. No more screwing around with captured mutants. No more stupid tests and lessons. The grownups had power. That was why they were always talking about each other, thinking about who was a spy.

Whenever the word "spy" came up, so did a few faces, but they were nobody Wendy knew. A Japanese lady with her hair in a bun. A balding guy. A blonde lady that looked a little like Amy…

Like Maximum Ride. That was Amy's real name. Or it was the name of the girl that looked like an older Amy. Which would mean that Amy was Maximum Ride Junior. Max II, Batchelder had called her. They had older versions of all of them, except for Wendy, who was the same age as Angel. Did Angel know how to do even half of what Wendy did? Probably not. Angels were messengers. They just repeated what they'd been told. They weren't prophets who could see the future, or God who could create and destroy.

Angel was kind of a stupid name. Wendy liked her own name fine.

She was almost where she needed to be. Howard's office door was in front of her. She reached out and touched the handle, only to stop when she heard voices coming from inside the office. Oh. Garcia had gotten there before her. He'd probably heard about the same thing.

"The hell is your problem? He was your intern, and you don't know where he is? We make those check-in lists for a reason, Simon, how could you be so _irresponsible_ —"

Howard cut him off, sounding smooth and unbothered. "I'm sure he'll turn up eventually. It was hella busy, he probably just…"

A phone rang.

"And who is that?" Garcia demanded. Something clicked.

"Simon?" Batchelder said. His voice was scratchy with static.

Wendy couldn't see Garcia, but she was pretty sure there was smoke coming out of his ears. "You said you were going to Canada _with him_ , you ass! And look at her! This is what happens when you leave him alone with them!" His anger burned itself out and was replaced with bitterness. "You," he snarled, "Are coming back to California. I'll deal with the clone. And _you_ have an hour to produce Reilly before you clean out your desk. Any longer and I'll press charges."

For the first time in her life, Wendy detected something like panic in Howard's thoughts. He liked control and now it was slipping through his fingers like sand. "Hey, Dante, listen…"

"No. I'm done listening to you-to the both of you. For years I've taken your excuses and your bullshit. No more. Sally and I can handle this branch of the resistance alone."

He let the door slam behind him as he walked out, and Wendy barely had to work to keep him from noticing her. His mind was a hurricane of ideas. Irrational. Uncontrolled. She could slip anything in, if she wanted—but she didn't. She'd come here to make a deal with Howard, and she didn't plan to change that. She liked him more than Garcia. He was more interesting. And he was like her.

She walked into his office.

Howard was on his laptop, talking to the screen. Wendy reached into his head and pushed at it. His eyes slid over her and she was able to walk up to him and peek over his shoulder. Batchelder was talking.

"That went well," he said.

Howard shrugged. "I'll handle it. I always have."

Batchelder frowned. "He's been that bad?"

"I think it's just the kids getting to him," Howard said. He snorted. "He doesn't know how to handle 'em like I—like we do."

"Hmmm," Batchelder said, and went silent. Amy was sitting by his side. Like Ari, she had gotten older. She really did look a lot like Maximum Ride, but in everybody's head Maximum Ride always had some emotion on her face. It was either a smile or a snarl, but she always looked alive. They'd taken Amy out of the tank, dried her off and given her fresh clothes, and her eyes were open, but she still looked asleep. The earpiece she had on was more lively than she was, blinking a green light every few seconds. Amy hadn't blinked once. Wendy squinted. It was hard to be sure with the grainy resolution, but she was pretty sure that those shiny lines going down Amy's face were tears and not just a trick of the light.

Amy had looked focused before. She'd looked like a hawk that had spotted a rat. Wendy didn't like it, because most of the time Amy looked at her like she was the rat, and she wasn't. But now Amy just looked like a sack of meat.

Maybe it was a good thing that Wendy had gotten out of that tank first. She didn't want to be broken like Jane, or dead like the boys, or whatever Amy was. A robot. A vegetable. A corpse.

A shudder ran down her spine when she realized that, although she hadn't tried to block Amy from seeing her, hadn't given her that little push to think about something else, the girl's eyes still hadn't focused on her. Not once.

"—and we should be touching down in Canada soon," Batchelder said. Unlike the girl by his side, he did give Wendy a look. "What's going on in there now?"

Wendy reached into Howard's head and pushed. "Nothing," he said.

"That's Angel II?"

Howard gave Wendy a quick glance. Wendy allowed it. She didn't have a choice. Howard was tough to control. She'd barely had the time to try—he was always popping in and out of the Eraser's dorms. Now that the bird-kids, the originals, had broken in and out again, he'd been even busier. And combined with that, his mind had an odd slippery-steel quality. Wendy hunted through her stolen thoughts to find something to compare it too. Howard's mind was like… like…

Like an overgreased bear trap. And now, like a rat in a trap. Desperate and sharp and volatile.

"Yeah," Howard said. "You got anything important or did you just call because you missed my voice?"

Batchelder shook his head. "I was going to ask for a debriefing on what my kids have been up to, but I think I'll deal with that at a later date." He gestured with an elbow. "This one is enough of a handful as is." His voice was scornful, the same way it had been when he'd said that Wendy wouldn't hold a candle to his Angel. What a jerk.

Howard chuckled. "That's the most helpful she's been in her life. Trust me, I had to oversee her training… she's vicious. Probably better for everybody if she stays a sack of potatoes."

A tear traced a fresh track down Amy's face. The light on her headset kept blinking.

Howard seemed interested. He tapped the screen, his finger on the blinking light. "Those still work this far away?"

"I haven't had a problem," Batchelder said. "Not like I'm wearing it myself, of course, but I haven't heard any static."

"Alright, man," Howard said. "Peace." He ended the call and closed his laptop before turning to Wendy. "Can I help you?" He had an expression on his face that she didn't put there. A predatory one. With a thrill of surprise, Wendy realized that this wasn't the first time he'd been alone in a room with a mutant.

But it was the first time he'd been alone with her. They weren't on footing as unequal as he'd like it to be.

"I know your secret," Wendy said, her voice sing-songing. "I know what you did." She drew the last word out into two syllables, mocking him.

Howard gave her a tired look. "If you think I took the last cookie from the cookie jar…"

He trailed off when Wendy started replaying his memories to him. First the old ones, from the eyes of the black-haired boy mutant. Fang. There wasn't a lot of substance to them, just fear and pain and the haze of drugs. They weren't even the actual memories, just snapshots of flashbacks that Wendy had gotten when he'd run past her in his rush to get out. Howard's eyes glassed over, and when the memories ended he blinked. "And he's gone," he said roughly. "So you can't blackmail me for _improper lab procedure_ or _gross physical and mental cruelty._ " He used mocking voices for the two phrases. The first was a caricature of Garcia, the second of Johnson.

"Not for that," Wendy agreed. And then she showed him her own memory. It felt weird to let him see the halls the way she walked through them. It felt wrong to show him what he looked like through her eyes. This was her head, her mind, why couldn't she have just told him?

But he looked shocked. He looked surprised. He might even, when she got to the good bit, look scared. That made it worth it. She kept pushing.

She let him hear what she had heard.

"I don't know if I trust you anymore!" Reilly said. He looked like his heart was breaking, too. He gestured down at a sleeping Ari. They'd put the patch on at that point, covering his ruined eye. But it wasn't like Howard could see it, because Reilly was pretty solidly between him and Ari. "Why didn't you keep an eye on him? What were you thinking?"

Howard's eyes narrowed. It was the first time anybody had challenged him like this. He was used to being the authority, and now Maximum Ride was getting into fights with his Erasers, the bird-kids were gone, and the one good thing he'd made in the past three years had gone and got its eye put out. Robert had been interesting, had had potential as a personal attack dog, but now he was dead. The events of the weekend were reminding him of the extra weight in his gut, the way his hair was starting to thin, inescapable reminders that he wasn't going to be young or even alive forever. So when he spoke, his voice was low and mean. "I'm thinking you need to know who the hell you're talking to."

"With all due respect, _sir_ ," Reilly said. "What the fuck is your problem?"

Wendy had heard whitecoats say worse to each other. Much worse. Which is why she was as surprised as anybody when Howard reached into his khaki shorts, pulled out a small handgun, and pressed it to Reilly's head. Realization registered on Reilly's face as the metal of the gun pressed against his forehead. He opened his mouth.

Howard pulled the trigger.

The gunshot was loud. It was one of the loudest things Wendy had heard, and that was counting the explosions when the bird-kids had busted in. Those had been from far away. This had been close up. It had hurt her ears so badly that she'd clapped her hands over them like some dumb kid.

The noise bothered her a lot more than the mess. Reilly's brains mostly went on the bedsheets, a mess of jelly on white. His body slumped over Ari's for a long moment, arms splayed out, before crumpling to the ground. The steady beeping of Ari's heart monitor filled the silence.

Wendy smiled. "Murder is illegal," she said.

"Looks like Dante already figured that one out," Howard said. "Or is going to in a week." He sounded drained, but not shocked or horrified. Wendy frowned. Maybe…

Maybe that was all he could feel.

That was a scary thought. It made him harder to control if she couldn't frighten him. Caged mutants had bigger ranges of emotion. She was used to them. What good was her power if it wouldn't let her dominate the situation?

She would have to tread carefully.

"Maybe he did," she said. "What if I could make it so you wouldn't have to worry about that? You'd be the most powerful person here. You wouldn't have to throw your back out carrying bodies up the stairs."

"And what do you get from that?" Howard said. He sounded interested. Wary, but interested. That was good, right? Wendy wasn't sure, but she kept going. She couldn't stop now. She was so close.

"I get to be your friend," she said, opening her eyes wide and tilting her head to the side. "I'd make a good friend." Really what she would get was a chance to learn what a real boss did. Not some rules-obsessed loser like Garcia, or a used-up Kleenex like Johnson. She wanted power and she wanted to know how to use it, and Howard was her best bet for both.

Howard laughed. "You want to be my friend? Here's a friendship bracelet." He tossed something carelessly onto the desk. Wendy recognized it from the older Jane's memories, and snatched it up for that.

"Pretty," she said absently.

"Very," Howard agreed, in the same tone of voice. He gave her a cruel smile. "Now what can you give to me?"

Wendy met his gaze without any fear or regret. "Jane."

His smile widened. "And you'll deal with Garcia right now."

"And then I'll come back," Wendy said. It was just as much of a warning as it was a reminder.

"But you'll go first," Howard said, and pointed to the door.

Wendy left, tying the bracelet around her wrist as she did. She didn't bother much with making people not notice her. Did it matter if they did? She'd put death inside the head of anybody who laid a hand on her. She followed their minds to find Garcia. He was in his office, talking to Johnson. Johnson was crying. She did that a lot. This time it was about Reilly, as opposed to when it was about Batchelder's kid, his eye, the bird boys, Wendy's lack of psychic powers…

Whatever.

Wendy looked at Johnson and pushed. It was a simple one. She wanted to go to her room and lie down. She stood and left, still crying.

"Hey," Garcia said, noticing her, "You need to be back in your room. Sally?" Johnson was too far gone to hear him. He shook his head. "Alright, I'll take you."

"No you won't," Wendy said calmly. And then she locked gazes with him and shoved her way into his mind.

It was a mess in there. Years of neatly organized files had been upturned, and bits of data were floating around without anything to hold onto. Wendy saw her face and its double. Batchelder and his son were there too, as well as Amy and some Latina woman who looked like she might have worked at the School. She had the same intense stare as Amy. But her face was gone in an instant, replaced by a snapshot of Garcia's kids playing in the ocean. The summer sun was glinting off of his wedding band. He was holding hands with his wife.

Wendy shook her head. That wasn't what she needed. That was the problem with her power—she only could take what was on the surface. And what was on the surface was a mess. So instead of trying to pick out an idea and change it, she just pushed.

Garcia's office connected to the room where he slept. He stumbled through the partitioning door like he was drunk, tripping on the throw rug. Wendy didn't have the mental energy to let him catch himself. She trailed him, careful to avoid the rug herself, and stood silently as he stripped the blanket off his bed. He had hit his head on the desk in his room when he'd fallen, and blood was streaming freely from the gash, staining his shirt and spotting the white sheet on the bed. Wendy had him take that off too, and tear it into neat strips.

The sheet was too tough for him to do it with his hands. She pushed. Her ears began to ring, and the air was rushing around her. She needed more air. Why wasn't the air she had good enough? It had always worked before. She was sucking in breath after breath, her lungs and air sacs working overtime. Something was wet on her face, and then she tasted salt and knew that her nose was bleeding.

Garcia gave her the most despondent look when he raised the bedsheet to his mouth, but she pushed and she pushed, and he started to use his teeth to rip it into strips. As he did the look on his face went away. His face went slack again, the despair leaving it as Wendy forced him onto the path she needed him to go down. It took him a while but finally he had some bedsheet strips that Wendy deemed passable. He twisted them into a rope, fingers stumbling. Wendy gritted her teeth at that. Why couldn't he do it right?

He was clumsy dragging the chair over, too. Wendy would have done it herself but her legs had turned to lead and all she could do was stare. Her eyes were embers in her head. Her mind was a furnace.

Garcia clambered up onto the chair. Slowly he looped one end of the rope around the ceiling fan. Wendy squinted through a haze of sweat and made him knot it. And then again.

And then he started on the noose. Wendy had him do it three times before she was satisfied. She couldn't have it slip. He started to groan when he did it. It was the low groan of somebody who was having a nightmare but couldn't wake up. His legs twitched, and the chair bucked underneath him. But it didn't give. He wasn't an exceptionally heavy man.

He fit the noose around his neck as Wendy broke out into cold shivers. For a long moment she couldn't push anymore and she just stood still and stared at the man staring blankly down at her. His gaze was dull and lifeless. He didn't seem to notice her. He never had, not really. None of them had ever appreciated her.

That would change.

The burst of rage fueled her.

Garcia stepped off the chair. His neck broke quickly and cleanly. His feet twitched.

Wendy felt his death snap through her mind as the effort of having to control him released. Now only in her own head, she sank to her knees, eyes shut. The world slid away as a black haze consumed her. She gulped air like she was the one in the noose, twitching as her muscles slowly and painfully began to work again. The involuntary spasms gave way to a full-body deadleg sensation. She groaned and curled up into the fetal position on the cool floor, her head screaming at her. Finally, when the headache had subsided, she forced herself to open her eyes.

It hurt. She was sweaty and bloody and sore. She felt gross. She just wanted to lie on the floor forever and never go in anybody's head again.

In her next breath she realized how dumb that sounded, and stood up. She used an abandoned strip of sheet to clean her face of blood and sweat before she headed out.

Now things around here were going to get interesting.


	33. Freefall

Everything was wrong. Tilted. Ari'd seen this ceiling enough recently to know that. His head spun and his mouth tasted funny, and his right eye was pulsing. He could feel his heartbeat in it. And it was covered in cotton, and cotton strands stretched across his face. An eyepatch. Why was he wearing an eyepatch? Had Gazzy wanted to play pirates?

Gazzy…

Angel…

Max…

Fang.

He remembered now, and the nausea redoubled, joined by fury. Ari blinked his good eye and hot angry tears streamed down his face. He was going to kill Fang. Kill him like he'd killed Robert. And then Max would realize…

No. No she wouldn't. She was too stuck in her ways, too bullheaded, to ever realize anything.

He was going to kill her too.

Dr. Howard probably wasn't going to like that, but Ari didn't care. Jeb wouldn't like it either. He considered that for a moment before realizing that Jeb had never liked a single thing he'd done, and that had been when he'd been trying to get Jeb to like him. But when he killed Max, Jeb wouldn't be able to talk about how great she was, so he'd have to see how hard Ari was trying.

And once he killed Max, Ari would be good. He'd be so good. He was strong now, the rest of the Flock would see that. But not Max and Fang. They had always thought he was weak.

Mind set, he rolled over to get out of the narrow hospital bed he was in. He barely moved an inch before pain lanced up his arms, and a shrill beeping started up. His head throbbed and he fumbled to find the IV drips in his arms. After a long moment he found them, through touch. Not sight. They were clear plastic needles he had to hold an inch away from his face to make out against the background of the room, which was almost entirely white. The two exceptions were the green lines on the various machines he'd been stuck to, which had spiked interestingly before leveling out, and the pink-gray stain on the white blanket that had covered him. Ari stared at it, confused. That wasn't the color of his blood.

He rubbed at his good eye, wondering if he was just seeing things funny because he had been tearing up. The stain remained the same color.

Whatever. Last time he had been knocked out he'd woken up seven years older, with wings and claws. Color-changing blood was nothing compared to that. He had bigger fish to fry. He sat up, finally. Getting his legs to move off of the bed was another challenge. The blanket covering him, not thick enough to stop him from feeling the cold, weighed about fifty million pounds. He had to push it off with his hands, which was hard because he needed to lean on his hands to stay sitting up. He ended up leaning on one hand while flailing at the blanket with the other, his abdominals aching on their unsupported side. When one leg was free, he switched. After ages of this his arms were sore, his back was sore, his core was aching, but the blanket was down to his shins and he could kick his feet free and swing them down to the ground.

He wasn't dumb enough to try standing without any support, and clung to the bedrail for a long moment as his legs tried to buckle beneath him. He flailed out with his wings to balance himself, but just about any movement made the muscles ache. He growled, frustrated. The sound helped him focus. It sounded menacing. For once he wasn't scared of it.

He wasn't scared of anything.

Walking was hard. Reading the floor signs was almost impossible. And hauling his body up the stairs was even tougher. As he dragged himself through the halls, Erasers and whitecoats gave him odd looks, but Ari just stared at them until they stopped. It wasn't like they had a leg to stand on. Most of them looked just as beat up as he was. Even the whitecoats had plaster in their hair. What, did they not have the time to clean up since the Flock had busted in?

Apparently giving people dirty looks was good for the body, because by the time Ari reached Dr. Howard's office, he felt halfway decent. He pushed open the door to see Dr. Howard and Wendy. The former was sipping ice tea out of a glass cup, the latter playing with a lanyard around her wrist, a leg kicking idly. Both of them gave him mildly interested looks when he came in.

"I want to kill Max," Ari said. "If you want me to save the world then I want to kill Max."

Dr. Howard raised an eyebrow. "Okay. No questions about the eye?"

"Does it matter?" Ari said. "I want to kill Max."

"It's probably never going to work again," Wendy said. "Dr. Reilly said." She giggled and pressed a chubby palm over her mouth.

"So what," Ari said. He didn't need two eyes. The one he had was working fine, and the other one didn't even hurt. He could just feel his heart going really fast in it.

Dr. Howard shrugged. "You want to kill Max, okay. Come on." He stood up from behind the desk, and a thrill went down Ari's spine. This was happening. This was really happening.

He realized, suddenly, that he had no idea what to do after he killed Max. And Fang, too. How was he going to get the rest of the Flock back to the E-shaped house? What would he say to Jeb?

And then Dr. Howard spoke, and flipped Ari's world upside-down for the seventh time in the past two days. "Max isn't here," he said. "The bird kids flew the nest. If you want to kill her, you'll have to catch her."

"Oh," Ari said. He flexed his wings. He could use them, right? He pointed at Wendy. "Is she coming with?" Jane was useless, the other three were dead… "Is Amy?"

"No and no," Dr. Howard said.

Ari frowned. "Where's Amy?" Amy was tough. Even if she was still tiny or just Nudge-sized, he'd bet that she could help him kill Max. It would be kind of weird, because she was basically another Max, but he'd explain it to her. What a bad person Max was. How she never understood anything. How she threw Ari away like garbage when he'd only ever wanted to help her. She'd understand. She had to.

"Amy's not here," Wendy said. "She's gone." Ari could hear the giggle in her voice. He didn't like it. It sounded like fish splashing through deep water—useless, but hiding something dark.

"Where is she?" he asked. "Is she dead? Did she go back to that room?"

At the mention of the room, Wendy scowled. "Just because—" she started, but shook her head. "Shut up," she said. "Who cares."

Not Ari, that's who. If Amy didn't want to come kill Max with him, that was her problem. He turned to Dr. Howard, who looked at him with mild amusement. "Okay, I'll find them."

It was easy when he didn't think. When he just shut his head up and let other people tell him what to do. None of it mattered, anyway. He knew what he wanted. Fang dead. Max dead. Jeb proud of him. Three little things. Anything before or after that didn't matter. He could just block it out. His new body, his ruined eye, the way his heart was still going fast even though he was standing still, the disgust in Max's voice, Robert's blood on his hands… They were still there. They hadn't left him yet. But he could make them quieter. Killing Max would make them quieter.

"How do you want me to find them?" he asked.

Dr. Howard knelt to pick up a backpack and headed for the door. As Ari stumbled to catch up, he passed the pack over. Ari slipped it on as he walked, edging his wings out a little so he could still open them. Obviously he couldn't open them inside, the halls were too narrow, but when he got outside, he'd be able to.

It had been a while since he'd been outside, hadn't it? It could have been just yesterday when they'd taken him here, but it felt like at least a year had passed. But it didn't matter, did it? He was going out now. He was going to find Max, and he was going to kill her and Fang.

"You know how to fly, right," Dr. Howard said.

"Keep my core tight, look for air currents, legs back—"

Dr. Howard cut him off. "You're overthinking it, kid. You have about a foot of new body and two brand new limbs. Whatever Batchelder taught his kids isn't going to work for you. If you overthink, you'll splat faster than an egg on the sidewalk. Just remember to flap."

"Remember to flap," Ari said. He could do that.

They took the stairs up to the roof, and Dr. Howard pushed open the metal door. "After you," he said drily.

Ari stepped out. The roof was a mess. There was a smoking wreck on it, surrounded by the dead bodies of Erasers. That was the chopper they'd taken him in, wasn't it? No wonder they hadn't caught the Flock yet.

"That bird girl really wrecked us," Dr. Howard said. He didn't sound proud or glad. Just angry and scornful. Jeb would have sounded proud. He'd been proud when Max had broken Iggy's wrist when they were sparring.

"Max loves ruining things," Ari said.

"I won't mind seeing her dead," Dr. Howard said. "There's a phone in your bag. It has my number programmed in. When you've killed the bird kids you want, give me a call. I'll come pick y'all up."

"Okay," Ari said.

"Just…" Dr. Howard chuckled. "Don't kill 'em all, right? I'm basically the head honcho now, but Sally's already crying like a baby over everything that's happened." He rolled his eyes. "Jesus." He turned his attention back to Ari. "If you want to bump off like, one or two, that's your business. But we do need the majority of 'em with their heads attached."

"Heads attached," Ari echoed. "Got it." The rest of the Flock didn't really matter. Just Max and Fang.

Dr. Howard spread his hands and shrugged. "That's all I gotta say. Remember to flap. Uh… go get 'em, tiger."

Ari frowned. "I'm not a tiger," he said. "I'm a wolf. Right?"

"Whatever you say, kid," Dr. Howard said. "Look, I gotta go. It looks like things are changing around here, and I don't want to be the sucker that gets locked out of the loop. Good luck." He left, the metal door clanging shut behind him, and Ari was alone on the roof.

The sky above him was vast and blue and completely empty. No, not empty-the Flock was out there, somewhere. He just had to get to them. Still staring up, he started walking toward the edge of the roof. There was this thing he had to do.

The roof was bordered by a short wall—about half a foot high, with a platform topping it. Ari stepped up onto the platform, and his toes hung off. They'd put him in sneakers. Nothing fancy, just canvas slip-ons, but he wasn't barefoot. It made hanging on harder, and the cheap material didn't grip the smooth metal. A slow breeze ruffled his feathers and his hair.

"Okay," Ari said. He'd seen the others do this thousands of times. They usually had a running start, though. Should he get off the platform and do that?

No. Every step back was a step away from Max. He couldn't chicken out. He couldn't fail.

He spread his arms wide and jumped off the roof.


	34. Shades of Gray

We were on our third day of freedom, and I could finally say that I felt like myself again. Being in the air did that. Having my Flock around me helped. I was tired, and I'd had about ten flashbacks since we'd escaped, but at least I could feel tired and scared. The day after Fang had almost kissed me I'd been in a dead daze. Gazzy would repeat a question two or three times, Iggy would snap his fingers, and finally Angel would use her power to push me out of it. It was bad. Worse, it was when they needed me. They had just lost Jeb too. Ari had betrayed them too.

I had to remember that they had it as bad as I did. But staying in one place had been nearly impossible. The headaches made it worse. I'd fallen out of the sky.

My wings hadn't caught me. I hadn't been able to feel them.

Even now I wasn't sure which was worse—the pain or the numbness.

But then we had landed, and I had eaten a full pack of hotdogs—and barfed half them up in a bush fifteen minutes after—and then I started to feel things. Anger, mostly. At Jeb for not being faster, at Ari for not being better, and at Fang, for not being more talkative.

And at myself, for failing my family.

But the anger lit a fire under me, and I got back into the air. I got us all back into the air. And we'd headed north, and east, and north some more. When we landed we were all walking wobbly, our legs not used to it, our wings hot and sore. We'd jogged to a rest station and knocked over a vending machine, shoved food into our grubby faces, and crawled up a tree to sleep. And then we woke up in the morning, bolted the rest of our food, and got in the air before the sun rose.

It was exhilarating. Living outside a routine, answering to nobody, using stolen wet wipes to bathe… or maybe that was just the sugar talking. I'd had nothing to eat today but more vending machine food. Candy was great and all, but I would kill somebody for a baked potato. Long-distance flights like this needed better fuel.

A glance over my right shoulder showed Fang, steady and stoic. Behind him was Angel. She was the one working the hardest. The thirty-odd miles an hour we were doing was nothing for me, but just about her top speed. Her sweet little face was turned up as the wind whipped past her, playing with her curls. She looked okay—grubby but not filthy, tired but not exhausted. She could handle a few hours more.

 _I'm fine_ , she thought to me. _I can handle it. I just want to get to New York._

I frowned. _Pace yourself_ , I thought. _And stay out of my head. We don't need two bird kids popping aspirin like candy._

 _Yes, Max._

In a sick sort of way I was glad for the headaches. They had kept Angel from finding out about me and Fang. We hadn't done anything. He'd just stared at me. And then in the morning I'd been having a nightmare and he'd tried to wake me up and I'd broken his nose. He waved off all my efforts of help, so I took it to mean that we were back to normal. Normal Max-and-Fang. Leader and wingman, tough and tougher, butt and ugly…

Brother and sister.

It was probably just the sugar, but I wanted to throw up.

Instead I looked over my left shoulder. "Gazzy!" I called. "Location!"

The Gasman had the furthest-back spot in our V, and for a good reason. He gave me a thumbs-up and then tucked his wings in and dove down, a towheaded bullet. We didn't even need to stop flying before he was back up. "Some town in Illinois!" He said it _ellen noise_.

I frowned. That was a bit more north than I'd planned on us being. On the other hand, though, further north meant more distance between us and the School.

 _But we have to go to New York!_

My frown deepened. _Angel, what did I say about being in my head?_ I shot her a stern look only to see that she'd dropped back a few feet, scowling. When my gaze met hers she sped up again.

On my other side there was the sound of a collision, and Nudge snapped, "Watch it!" I glanced over to see her and Gazzy flapping erratically. Nudge had the spot behind Iggy, and Gazzy must have knocked into her as he tried to get back to his place in our V-formation. Nudge glared at him for a moment before jerking her gaze forward again, her wings tight with tension.

"Nudge," I called. "Chill."

Her brown eyes locked on mine for a second, and some unrecognizable emotion flashed across her face before she nodded. She still didn't look happy.

I sighed. "Fang, you take the lead," I said. I didn't have to raise my voice as much. Fang looked at me and nodded once, moving up as I flapped hard to get higher. Now separate from our V, I dropped back and to my left until I was over Nudge, and then dropped down to fly in tandem with her. Talking was a lot easier like this.

Finding out what to say was harder. I've never been tactful or diplomatic, and Nudge's emotions were a prepubescent minefield. Not that I could blame her now. I cleared my throat.

"Look," I said. "I know it's rough."

"Yeah," Nudge said.

"I can't believe I have to say this, but do you want to talk about it?"

Nudge tensed up and shook her head, her curls bouncing in the wind.

I sighed. "It's tough on all of us, okay?" I said. "Just try to keep that in mind. Don't blow up at Gazzy, he's trying his hardest."

"Yeah, okay," Nudge said.

"Okay," I said. "Great. Glad we had this talk."

I took my spot back at the head of the formation. It was still light out, and it would be for a while. Cold, but then again it was going to be when we were this high up. Maybe when we touched down for good we'd be able to get decent clothes. Hit up a Goodwill or something.

It was dumb, but I missed my leather jacket. They'd taken it from me at the School, along with my combat boots. I'm not much of a fashion-statement kind of girl, but that jacket kept me warm and those boots helped me break heads. I'd had them for years and I missed them now. And back in the E-shaped house there was a red knit sweater Nudge and Iggy had worked together to make for my birthday that I'd never get to wear again, and fuzzy blue socks that Gazzy and Angel had bought me for Christmas. They were gone too, like Jeb and Ari.

The air around me was blurry, but we weren't flying through any clouds. I blinked hard and turned that nostalgia and pain into anger. The School had taken this from me. My home, my family, the clothes off my back. But they couldn't take my wings and they couldn't take my Flock, and I was going to live and grow strong just to spite them. They'd already taken Ari but they wouldn't take anybody else. I wouldn't let them.

That was the fire that kept me going for the rest of the day, pushing us further north. When we finally touched down it was on the shores of one of the Great Lakes. As we stumbled around, shaking our legs out, I kept an eye on Nudge. She ran a hand through her finger twists and kicked the sand halfheartedly, her shoulders slumped. Her wings were relaxed but not pulled in, and they trailed behind her, feathers dragging in the sand. It wasn't a good look on her.

"Angel," I said. "You and I are getting food. The rest of you guys get camp ready—I want a fire going by the time we get back." We'd landed fairly far away from town, near a small forest. If anybody did see the fire, hopefully they'd just think it was campers. And we'd be long gone by the time they got to us.

Angel put her small hand in mine as we walked down the shoulder of the road that ran through the forest. I smiled down at her, more tired than I thought I'd be. It wasn't like our pace was anything difficult for me. On the other hand, the headaches and crushing sense of betrayal were a bit much. And what I was about to ask Angel to do was weighing on my shoulders.

"Has Nudge…" I started, and then hesitated. Angel looked up at me. "Has she talked to you?"

Angel shook her head. "She told me she wanted me out of her head." She hesitated. "She scares me a little. It feels like she's pulling herself apart."

My stomach twisted. Nudge wasn't supposed to be like this. She was bright and bubbly and vivacious. She was the reason I even knew the word _vivacious_ , even if neither of us knew how to spell it. Whatever they had done to her at the School had taken her away from who she used to be, and that made me angry and scared in equal measure.

Angel and I kept walking silently, hand in hand. The forest gave way to fancy rich people houses. McMansions big enough to fit my entire Flock a few times over, with hot running water and fridges that had ice makers. I wondered if the humans in there had ever gone hungry a day in their lives. After a few long moments there was a sign reading _Muskegon Yacht Club_. I stared at it. What the hell was a muskegon?

"It sounds like a beaver," Angel said.

I shrugged. "Maybe it's a beaver-platypus mutant."

"We're on a lake," Angel said. "Maybe it has gills."

We both giggled.

"Let's go to the yacht club," I said. "There might be a restaurant there." Although there was no way in hell we were going to walk into a restaurant in our filthy stolen clothes, we could find the dumpster. Rich people threw out food too, right?

It turned out that not only did rich people throw out food, they threw out a lot of food. We picked through trash and ended up with armfuls of slightly bruised fruits and vegetables, most notably a ton of potatoes. Somebody'd thrown out an entire bag of potatoes. Of course there wasn't a lot of protein in them, but I'd take what I could get. Free was free.

My stomach was twisting again, in a way completely divorced from the smell of the slightly-off food. "About Nudge," I said, adjusting my grip on the sack of potatoes.

Angel looked up at me. "Yeah?"

"I know she said not to read her mind," I said. "But this is bad." I blinked and tried to figure out how to phrase it. Angel was a kid still. She was going to grow up fast—the School made sure of that. You got a good head on your shoulders or you died. But in the moment, she was still a kid. "I need to make sure she's not going to hurt herself, okay? And I can't help her if I don't know what's wrong."

"She usually talks a lot," Angel said. "But now she's quiet all the time. She's like another Fang."

Fang was his own can of worms that I didn't feel like opening. "If you say so," I said. "Listen, I'm going to try to talk to her tomorrow, before we take off. The two of us, alone."

"And you want me to read her mind," Angel said.

"No," I said. "That's wrong. That's spying. I'm going to try to get her to tell me what's wrong, but if she doesn't, then I want you to read her mind."

"Isn't that still spying?" Angel said.

I sighed. "Yeah, but it'll be because we don't have any other choices. So it'll be less wrong."

Angel frowned. "But she really didn't want me inside her head. Like. Really."

"I know," I said quietly. "I know. But it's for her own good."

For a long moment Angel kept frowning, but as we walked through the forest, the crease between her eyebrows smoothed out. She looked up at me. "Okay, Max. If you say so. You're the leader."

"I am," I said. "Don't do this if I don't tell you to, okay, Angel? It's like… like the atomic bomb."

"Okay," Angel said. She let out an adult-sounding sigh. "Nobody wants me in their head. It sucks."

I ruffled her hair. "I'm sorry, baby. Just… try to not listen to anything unless you need to, okay?"

"Okay," she said.

We didn't say anything until we met up with the others on the beach. Gazzy was splashing around in the lake, shoes discarded and pants rolled up. Fang was standing by his shoes, between him and the fire. Nudge was sitting there silently, her head pillowed against Iggy's shoulder. He had an arm around her, and his face was lined with worry.

"Hey," I said, and waved. "We've got potatoes."

"Potatoes are good," Iggy said. "I can work with potatoes. We tried to catch fish, but we don't have anything. I suggested stripping down and using our hands, but some people—" He pointed in the direction of the lake, but at a clump of grass instead of Fang. "—Are total buzzkills."

Fang wandered over, hands in his pockets. "You know what the real buzzkill is? Hypothermia."

Iggy groaned. "It's June, dude. Nobody has ever gotten hypothermia in June."

"Arctic explorers," Angel said.

"Mountain climbers," Fang said.

"You if you go into Lake Friggin' Michigan at night," I said.

"Y'all suck," Iggy said. "Nudge would catch fish in the lake if Fang let her, right, Nudge?" He nudged Nudge.

"No, I'd get hypothermia," Nudge said.

"You suck, Nudge," Iggy told her.

She shrugged. "Yeah."

That… didn't sound good. Just about everybody knew it, and we were all looking at her, concerned.

"I'll go watch Gazzy while you guys cook the potatoes," Nudge said, and scrambled off. Angel made to go with her, but she just walked faster. Angel followed her anyway.

Iggy took the potatoes from me and opened the bag, running his fingers gently over a potato. "Okay Fang, you wash these off in the lake. You can even strip down and get hypothermia if you want."

"Stripping is an integral part of my cooking process," Fang said, and headed off.

Iggy let him go and then turned to me. He leaned in and spoke quietly but intently. "What the hell is wrong with Nudge?"

"I the hell don't know," I said. I was just as quiet but unable to hide the frustration in my voice.

Iggy let out a lungful of air as he used a long stick to do… something… to the fire. Made it less hot. Look, I'm not a chef. "I've been trying to talk to her," he said, "but she just shrugs it off."

"That's not good."

"No shit, Sherlock."

Fang came back with the potatoes, and Iggy began to carefully position them in the embers, settling them in little nests. After a moment I started to mimic his motions, and Fang joined in. Pretty soon we had a small but sizeable pile of potatoes. Not a bad dinner, especially when coupled with the other things we'd managed to get away with. Angel had found a bag of slightly-stale fancy bread, and I ripped chunks off of a loaf and passed them to Fang and Iggy.

"About Nudge," Fang said through a mouthful of bread.

"Yeah?" I said. Maybe she had said something to him that she hadn't to the rest of us.

He frowned. "It's bad."

I sighed. "Yeah."

He gave Iggy a look and then, moving slowly and in complete silence, gestured to the center of his chest. He jerked his head back to indicate Nudge and raised an eyebrow.

My heart jumped into my throat. My legs went wobbly and I fell from my crouch onto my ass, landing with a thump in the sand. Fang was the way he was at least partially because some sicko had branded his chest. If somebody had hurt Nudge like that I didn't know what I'd do.

Yes I did. I'd turn around and fly back to California and burn that whole fucking building to the ground, salt the ashes and then burn them again.

Fang put a hand on my arm. Up close I could see the concern in his dark eyes. He bumped his forehead against mine, lightly, once, and then pulled away.

"So are you two heading off or something," Iggy said. "Fill a guy in here."

"No," I said, surprised at how normal my voice sounded. "Just worried about Nudge is all. Are the potatoes almost done?"

They were.

I called the kids in and we all gorged ourselves on potatoes, Nudge chewing slower than the rest of us but still eating, not making eye contact with anybody. She only spoke when she finished the bagel she'd grabbed out of the bread bag. "Can we sleep on the beach? The water sounds nice."

I swallowed my last mouthful of potato. The water did sound nice, lapping quietly at the shore. After days and days of headaches, some white noise would do me good. We'd all be covered in sand, but we could wash off. Heck, with Lake Michigan right there, we could all take a bath. "Sure," I said. And then I batted Nudge's hand away from her arm. She had been itching at her scar. It was mostly healed, but still. "Don't do that," I said. "You'll open it up again."

She blinked. "Okay. Thanks, Max."

Iggy dumped a few handfuls of sandy dirt over the fire and it went from embers to ashes. Now the only light was what came from the sky. It was a bright night, and we were in the wild. I could see just about every star. As my Flock settled down for the night, I leaned back onto my elbows to watch the sky.

Fang sat next to me.

"Get some rest," he said. His voice was quiet and soothing. Gentle. "I'll take first watch."

"Y'sure?"

"Yeah."

"'Kay."

I'd be okay if he was. Everything else was complicated, but that was simple. I let the sound of the lake lull me to sleep.


	35. Best Served Cold

They had stopped for the night, which meant that Ari stopped too. That was good. His new wings couldn't keep him in the air for that long. He could sprint good as running, but flapping for long distances hurt every single muscle he had. While he'd been trailing the Flock he'd needed to drop out of the sky, rest for a few minutes, and then zoom back up. It was hard work and he'd ended every day at midnight or later. He had to make sure he caught up to them, but also make sure he didn't overshoot them.

Mostly he looked for their campsites. They were messy when they stole things. People would complain. Jeb hadn't taught them better.

Ari didn't need to steal things. Dr. Howard had given him that backpack, full of energy bars and water bottles and, most importantly, cash. There was a ton of money in there, in tens and twenties, held together with paper clips. When Ari ran out of food, which happened a lot sooner than he thought it would, he started on that. He was careful with the money, not spending more than twenty bucks at once. He could get a lot of food for that, especially at convenience stores. Like right now. The two tens he'd pushed at the tired-looking lady in the 7-11 had gotten him a big bag of pretzels and hot dogs and a giant Powerade and a tuna salad sandwich.

The tuna salad sandwich was gross, though. He'd only gotten it because he was curious, and he'd only eaten it because he was so hungry that even roadkill looked good.

He balanced his last hot dog on his stretched-out leg as he reached into his bag for the tube of saline and the bandage box. He had to clean his eye everyday, and change the bandage too. Dr. Howard kept reminding him. If he didn't then he'd get an infection and his head would rot. Dr. Howard kept reminding him of that too. It was kind of annoying but it felt nice. Jeb had never cared. He had put food in front of Ari if Ari was at the table with the rest of the Flock, but he never told Ari anything specially for him.

To stop himself from thinking about Jeb, Ari eased the eyepatch off. He slid the cotton pad off of his eye. There wasn't any pus today, which was good. There had been some yesterday. When Ari had called, Dr. Howard had said not to worry about it. Stuff like that happened. It didn't necessarily mean that Ari's eye was going to rot in his head and kill him.

Okay, Ari had said, and then hung up. He had done his eye real fast and then got in the air. The logic behind this was simple.

He didn't want to die. But if he was going to anyway, he wanted Max and Fang to die first. He had to catch up to them for that to happen.

He was pretty close now. They were within his line of sight. He was staying hidden, trying to stay under Angel's radar. So far nothing had happened. They had just eaten, chattered amongst themselves, and went to sleep. It was pathetic how hung up he was over them, really. None of them seemed bothered by the fact that they had abandoned him. Dr. Howard had been right.

They did hate him. They were glad he was gone. The only one of that that was even kind of sad about the whole thing was Nudge, and Ari was willing to bet she was only upset because she had been locked up. Maybe if she hadn't fought then she wouldn't have been locked up!

He huffed out an annoyed breath, finished doing his eye, and started to clean up his trash. The only thing that he had left was the Powerade bottle, and he finished that in a couple of sips. It was the blue kind—not as good as the red kind, but they hadn't had that. He put the empty bottle in the pretzel bag with the hot dog wrappers, which was still hard. Getting used to doing things with one eye was going to take time.

It was still weird that he only had one eye, and thinking about it for too long made him feel sick. He couldn't understand why. Robert had tried to kill him, and it was good that Ari didn't let him. Besides, Robert was a failed mutant. Dr. Howard had said as much. He was too big. His heart would have given out anyway. Ari was better because he was built the right way.

But Ari was the reason that Robert had come out wrong.

But Robert had been trying to kill him then, too.

Ari groaned and held his head in his hands, fingers clutching at his hair. Nothing made sense. It wasn't fair. "Not my fault," he reminded himself. His teeth tore at his lips when he spoke because he didn't think to position them right, and the pain helped him focus. Only three things mattered.

Kill Fang.

Kill Max.

Go back to the School.

Ari brushed his hands off on his jeans and stood. It was finally time to end this.

Max and Fang were a bit further away from the rest of the Flock. Max was sleeping on her side, her bronze highlights gleaming in the starlight. Ari couldn't see her face, but she didn't look tensed up. Good. She'd be easier to get a jump on if she wasn't expecting him.

Next to her Fang was keeping watch. He didn't see Ari, who was still hiding in the tree cover. In fact he had his back to Ari—he was facing towards the road. He was looking around slowly.

Ari wasn't scared of him. He walked out of the tree cover and toward Fang. Even though he was as light on his feet as he could be, Fang still heard him, and was up in a defensive position well before Ari could get within a meter of him.

"Go away," Fang said quietly. "Or I'll get violent." His eyes narrowed. "We don't want you here."

Ari made fists. He'd kill Fang, and then Max—

But the rest of the Flock would wake up.

He really hadn't thought this through, had he.

Max mumbled something in her sleep and rolled over, completely unaware of what was going on, and Ari realized in a flash that he didn't just want to kill her, he wanted to hurt her. She had ripped his heart out of his chest and stomped on it. He had only ever wanted to make her proud of him, and she never thought he was anything more than garbage.

He wasn't going to kill Max tonight. Just Fang. She never paid attention to him, so he'd kill the one person she cared about the most. He just had to get Fang angry enough. He had gotten Robert angry enough to charge past him into the tank, he could do this.

Ari leaned forward onto the balls of his feet and spread his wings. "All you know how to do is run away," he taunted. "That's why you couldn't take down the School. Because you're weak. All Jeb taught you how to do was run away. Maybe you're part chicken."

Fang's face didn't change.

"Dr. Howard's teaching me better," Ari said, proud now. "Look at me. He's made me stronger already. Do you know how easy it was to track you? You're going this slow because you're _weak_. I just got wings and already I'm catching up to you. I'm stronger and better, and you know it."

Fang snorted. "Better than what you were, maybe." He spat onto the ground. "Easy to add stuff to zero."

Ari laughed. "You're right. I was nothing. And now? Look at me." He flexed the muscles in his arms and bared his teeth in a vicious snarl. They were longer now, stronger. He was going to find out how good they were at ripping into things soon. The thought sent a thrill of anticipation up his spine. This was really happening. "I'm better than you ever will be," he said, and then lied. "Maybe I'll do you a favor and take you back to the School. They'll fix you—"

Fang punched him in the face. It was such an uncharacteristic motion that Ari hadn't thought to dodge. He went back, his butt hitting the sand, stars bursting in his head. He tasted blood in his mouth, felt it on his lips. He bared his teeth in a snarl as he scrambled to his feet, only to have sand flung into his eyes. Air whooshed by him and he squinted up.

Fang was backlit by the moon, dark wings working to keep him upright as he hovered. His face was shadowed, but the bitterness in his voice was clear. "You want to take me back? You'd better have a body bag."

Ari gathered his legs underneath him and leapt into the air. "I'll only need a matchbox to fit what's left of you." Talking was hard. Flying was harder. He had to jump high to make sure that his wings wouldn't hit the ground on their downstroke. And he wasn't going to let Fang surprise him again, so he made sure to be ready to dodge. Fang had the advantage in the air. He'd been born with wings and had been flying for years. He could fly before Ari could walk.

But Ari was smaller, and he was angrier. Max and Fang had taken everything away from him and he was going to take everything away from them. He beat his wings hard and got a little higher in the air, and then he did exactly the opposite of what he'd seen Jeb telling the Flock to do.

He folded his wings and dove at Fang. He hit the other boy in the chest with his shoulder, and it was like running into a brick wall. Every muscle in Fang's body was a steel cable, and even as Ari's momentum pushed him forward he felt like he was breaking. The only thing that kept him from crying out was the shocked grunt Fang made. Ari had hurt him. Surprised him.

"You little—" Fang wheezed. His wings were working doubletime as the two of them floundered through the air. Ari had an arm around him, clinging for dear life. Fang kicked out, the motion weak, and Ari kicked back. They grappled for a long moment, rising and falling unsteadily. "—Useless piece of—"

That got Ari's attention. "You're the useless one!" he snapped, and reached up to claw Fang's face. Fang's knee hit him right in the sternum as his claws tore through flesh, and both of them dropped. Choking for air, Ari fell away from the bigger boy. His wings wouldn't open. The wind screamed around him as he plummeted toward the lake.

He shoved his wings as far open as they could get as his heart hammered, bile rising in his throat. Flapping hurt. Flapping hurt a lot. But he kept doing it, and after a few torturous seconds he was level with Fang. He spat a few times and kept flapping, pulling away from Fang. It was hard for Ari to tell, but he could smell copper in the night air. His claws were wet with blood. He'd hit Fang.

Fang seemed just as shocked as Ari felt. Or he might have been. He was hovering still, a few meters away. Ari couldn't make out his expression, but he had his hand on his face.

But he wasn't attacking. That wasn't good. Ari wanted him angry. Robert had been angry, and that was how Ari had beaten him. So Ari laughed, even though his stomach was tight with adrenaline. "First blood," he said. "Told you I was better."

"I should have smothered you in your sleep," Fang snarled, and rushed at Ari. He was too fast to dodge—all Ari could do was hold on. Fang was going so fast that Ari couldn't move his wings. The air was cutting at him like knives, and the world around him was a blur. He couldn't fly like this.

He thrashed around, trying to get free. Fang twisted to avoid most of the blows, but Ari managed to land an elbow in his stomach. Fang grunted, his face contorting, and Ari smashed his forehead into Fang's jaw.

Fang locked his hands around Ari's throat.

Ari panicked. Fang's grip was strong and inescapable, and they were still going up. The little air that Ari could get was thinner and colder. He had to act soon or he'd be done for. But his wings were dragging uselessly and the wind was too strong for him to use them.

Wait.

He'd spent the first seven years of his life not using his wings.

He could do this.

Instead of wrestling away from Fang, Ari got an arm around the bird-boy's neck. He crashed into Fang. Gray clouded Ari's vision, but he didn't need to see to do what he did next. Biting wasn't hard when you were this close.

He had teeth this big for a reason, but he didn't bite so much as rip-he couldn't get a good grip because the second he broke the skin, Fang started thrashing. He lost his grip on Ari's throat and grabbed his hair instead, ripping his head away from Fang's shoulder. His wingbeats faltered, and the wind rushing past Ari slowed enough for individual wingbeats to become audible. If Ari wanted to get free, now would be the time.

He didn't. Instead he grabbed onto Fang's sides with his knees and extended his own wings. Holding onto Fang like this technically meant he was taller than him, and his wings were further up, so he had control over their momentum. Ari flapped hard, smacking Fang's wings back. Up this close he could see Fang's face. It was masked with blood, but his eyes were full of anger and hate.

Ari made a fist, drew up and back, and punched him in the face. Fang's head snapped back and he almost slipped out of Ari's grip. Ari squeezed his knees tighter and hit Fang again, this time with his other fist. And again. Fang's wings went limp, which meant that Ari had to work harder to keep both of them in the air. He flapped harder still as he rained blows on Fang, anger building in him like a fire.

"You're pathetic," he snarled in between blows. "This is what Jeb liked more than me?"

Fang coughed once, sputtered, and spat blood into Ari's face. Bits of his teeth were still white, and they flashed in the moonlight as he opened his mouth to speak. "Screw you," he said weakly.

Ari drew back his fist for the final blow.

And then somebody screamed. It was coming from the lakeside as much as it was in Ari's head, an explosion behind his eyelids. He clapped his hands over his ears as he curled into a ball. Fang slipped free and fell, and Ari fell too. He couldn't hear anything that wasn't that awful shrieking sound. Somehow he twisted in midair, and operating on blind instinct threw his arms out wide. His wings went out too, and he flapped as hard as he could to get away from the source of the screaming.

It faded a little as he crossed the lake, but not enough for him to notice the trees. He hit one head-on. Thinner branches whipped at his face, but it was the one that hit his stomach, knocking the air out of him, that stopped him from flying himself into the ground. Ari clung to it as the gray in his vision faded. It was a thick branch, close enough to the tree trunk that getting a seat was easy. He scrambled to do that as his heart thudded unevenly. It was nearly painful. He could feel it in his face, especially in his bad eye. To try to distract himself he stared at the lake.

He could barely make out the Flock—it was night and he was far away-but he could see the ripples in the water that meant that they'd gone in after him. As he squinted, trying to see what was going on, one of them popped out of the water. Not light enough to be Iggy or Gazzy or Angel, not dark enough to be Nudge…

Ari stared at Max, the night air hanging heavy between the two of them. She was looking around frantically, but it felt like every one of her passing glances met his. There was a long moment when it was just her treading water, gaze sweeping over the lake and the forest beyond it. It was like her eyes were spotlights. Ari felt sick.

He wanted her hurt, but he couldn't see it. He didn't want to see this—the frantic in-between. He just wanted her holding Fang's dead body and knowing she was next because of how she hurt him.

His stomach twisted and he did too, stumbling out of the short tree. He hit the ground hard, his knees and teeth jarring from the impact. It wasn't fair. He'd already been hurt so bad. Why this, too? Why couldn't he have both eyes and a heart that wasn't going too fast always? Why couldn't he see Fang die?

Why didn't he _want_ to see Fang die?

He started jogging through the scraggly forest, moving slowly and carefully. Finally there were enough trees between him and the lake that Max was completely obscured. But still that nagging feeling wouldn't go away. It felt like shame, and guilt, and all the things he was supposed to have left behind.

What had he done?

What had he _done_?

"I did the right thing," Ari said out loud, but the words sounded empty. The night was silent. "I did the right thing!"

He had to have.

No. He did.

But Fang had been like his older brother and Max was _Max_ , beautiful and strong. How could they be wrong? Maybe if he went out, if he pulled Fang's body out of the water and explained to her what Fang had said, she'd take him back. He was stronger now. He could keep up with her. He'd be just as good as Fang—better, even.

It had been Fang that Ari wanted, right? Fang was the one who'd actually hurt him. Max had only been talking. Even if she'd hated him then, maybe she wouldn't now. He was stronger. He could make her see reason.

Make her see.

He could still feel his heartbeat in his bad eye, and he reached up in the dark to press his fingers against the cotton pad. "Stop it," he muttered. His heart didn't stop. His heart didn't care how he felt. It was just a hunk of tissue. But he couldn't focus, and—

His claws bit into the skin of his forehead, reopening the scar Robert had given him. Slowly he dragged his hand down his face, his claw skimming over over the cotton eyepatch, tearing through the fragile skin under his eye. Blood trickled down his face, the slow throb of his heart and sickening confusion of his thoughts replaced with chilly certainty.

Ari shuddered in the cool lake air as a drop of blood slid onto his lip. He blinked and it fell, insanely slowly, to splash on the grass. He smiled down at his feet, his sharp teeth for once feeling at home in his mouth.

Finally. Something that made sense.


	36. Into the Lake

In retrospect, I wasn't sure which woke me up—the splash or the screaming. But it didn't matter. As I pushed myself up onto my elbows, body flooding with adrenaline, Nudge grabbed my arm. "Fang's hurt!" She pointed at the lake.

Instinct kicked over and I toed out of my boots, heart racing. "Angel, try to use your powers to find him. Gazzy!" He was knee-deep in the water already. "Get in the air and spot me. Nudge, if I'm down too long, you find me, okay?"

She nodded, her face tight with worry.

"Iggy!" I shouted. He had already taken to the air, his wings bone-white in the moonlight. I didn't know if he could hear me, or if he'd stop if he did, so I just settled for reassurance. "I'll take care of this!"

I didn't wait for a response before I ran headlong into the water, throwing my arms out to help me dive in.

Lake Michigan was freezing. Colorado winters were bad, and the air up high was worse, but the water of the lake reached into my bones and my lungs, choking me before I even started to use up my air. My muscles tensed up and my teeth jolted together, and I had to fight to go forward, further down into the cold, instead of leaping out of the lake and taking to the air.

Fang only had a few moments before he was dead for good. And that's assuming he was alive when he hit the water. He had to be alive, because God knew I wasn't getting hypothermia in my ass for a dead body.

Even with my eyes open, the water was impossible to see through. I ran out of air in an instant of blind fumbling around. I kicked my way to the surface and gulped in air as I frantically glanced around. I'd gotten pretty far out. If I squinted I could see the lake still rippling from my treading water, and further away there was another disturbance. That was where Fang was. It had to be.

I gritted my teeth and went back under.

It wasn't as bad the second time, but my limbs felt heavy. I extended my wings as far as they could go and used them to push me through the water. The cold hit me like a truck. I gritted my teeth, forcing myself onward. I'd get used to it. I had to get used to it.

I didn't get used to it. Muscle cramps wracked my body every time I pushed myself forward. But I kept going, down into the freezing black depths of the lake. Fang was here somewhere, he had to be somewhere I could find him…

A bad cramp had my legs spasming in the water. My eyes squeezed shut, I clamped my hands over my mouth to stop from screaming in agony and wasting all my air.

For a second I thought I was going to die. The cold waters of the lake would claim me and Fang, leaving us in a tomb even more anonymous than the shallow ditches Erasers dug for failed mutants. Maybe that was the entire point of this whole mess—to break me down, to take everything from me. No home, Jeb dying, Ari turning evil, and now no Fang—it only made sense that everything would end with me.

And then I heard a voice, and the sound was as sweet as windchimes on a lazy summer evening.

 _Max? Max, can you hear me?_

It was Angel.

 _Sweetie, stay out of the water,_ I thought sluggishly.

 _I will. I'm in the air. I can hear Fang._

Those last four words set a fresh fire in my veins, and I pushed myself through the water, kicking hard despite the pain. I had wasted some air floundering around, but I still had a good two and a half minutes in me. I'd find Fang by then.

 _Go down_ , Angel told me, and I did. As I went deeper, she guided me. I could hear the strain in her thoughts, but I didn't have time to worry about it. I was running out of air, running out of time, and Fang was too. How long had he been sinking? What was I going to pull out of the lake?

Angel had heard his thoughts. That was the only consolation. He wasn't dead yet.

And then I floundered into something. The shock of hitting it when I hadn't been able to see squat had me let out a little-girl scream, which, when underwater, was a dumbass move. But when I realized that screaming had gotten me a mouthful of sodden feathers, I could have belted out the entirety of Bohemian Rhapsody.

It was Fang. I wrapped my arms around him and kicked hard, flapping too, doing my best to get us to the surface. I didn't feel the cold, didn't feel anything but gratitude. It was Fang, and Angel had found him, and she was yelling at me to hurry in my mind, too, and we were going to be okay. We were all going to be okay.

We broke the surface of the lake and I let out all the stale air I'd been carrying around. Treading water, I gasped and gasped and laughed, hysterical with relief.

Fang didn't say anything. He barely even moved.

And then I looked and saw that we were absurdly far away from the shore.

Oh, crap.

"Fang," I said gently. When that didn't get me a response, I squeezed him harder. "Fang!"

He was breathing. I could feel a pulse.

"Goddamnit, Fang, if you die on me I'll kill you," I said, and squeezed his stomach harder still.

He coughed, weakly at first, and then harder. The coughing turned into retching, and approximately half of Lake Michigan came out of his mouth.

"Gross," I told him.

Fang sputtered. "Y-your face."

"Classy as always. Listen, we need to get to shore. Can you swim?"

He was shivering in my arms, and shivered out a long string of _m- m- m-_.

"Maybe?"

"Michael Phelps," Fang spat, "Eat your heart out."

And then my enormous dumbass of a wingman tried to wriggle free. "No! No, we are not doing that, you moron, you nearly died, you nearly drowned—" My voice was going all hysterical and girly. I hated it, and I hated Fang for making me feel this way. "I'm not going to watch you sink like a rock again, Fang!"

Fang sighed. "Max," he said, "Can _you_ swim all the way to shore?"

"Of course I can!" Out loud, the words sounded a lot less convincing.

"Carrying me?"

I hesitated.

The cold had started to creep back in again, but this time my legs didn't hurt. They were just numb. Treading water was getting harder by the second.

"Max," Fang said, very softly. He closed his hands over mine.

"No," I said. "No, Fang, don't you dare say some dumb self-sacrificing bullshit—"

That was when Iggy swooped down, the mangiest rescuing angel I'd ever seen. He was hovering about a foot above the surface of the water. "Hey, losers. Need a ride?"

"Yeah," Fang said.

"Grab my feet."

I wrapped an arm around his lower legs and held on for dear life as he towed us to shore. After what felt like years of freezing, we were finally on the beach, and I could haul Fang onto the sand and drop down next to him.

Fang let out a wheeze and rolled onto his side, hands over his stomach.

Ah, hell.

The rest of the Flock was surrounding us, faces twisted with concern. And while all I wanted to do was sink into the beach and fall asleep, I couldn't do that. My family needed me.

"We need to get the hell out of here," I said. "Iggy, take Nudge and get us a car. Preferably one with enough space for Fang to get a row to himself. Gazzy, Angel, I need you to get us first-aid supplies. Towels too. I don't care how, but be back in five minutes. Now go!"

They went, and I grabbed Fang by the shoulder and rolled him onto his back. "Come on. Where did he get you?"

Now that we were out of the lake and the stars were providing some light, I could see the scars on his face, and on his neck. "Are those bite marks? Jesus."

"Hurts," Fang said, which was about as expressive as he got when it came to talking about things like this.

I peeled his shirt off and saw that his torso was mostly bruise, and inky-black in more than one area.

"Ari did this," Fang wheezed, and it was just as bad as a punch in the stomach. Worse.

"Well, we won't take watch alone anymore," I said, and wrung his shirt out as best I could before dabbing at his face with it. He would need stitches for it. We heal fast, but getting beaten senseless and dumped into a huge freezing lake to die has a funny way of messing with the immune system. But, freezing lake or not, Fang was alive. And I was too. In spite of everything, we were both here.

I let out a shaky laugh, and Fang raised an eyebrow at me. It was hysterical. His dumb perfect face—

I leaned in and kissed his mouth, drunk with relief. His lips felt just as soft as they looked. "We're alive," I said, when I pulled back. "We're alive and we're okay."

And then I realized what I just did, and blood rushed to my face. "That is, um. Are you breathing alright? Are you cold? Let me get you a sweatshirt—"

It was only a few minutes before the other four came back, but it felt like centuries. I kicked sand over the campfire, gathered the few things we had accumulated over our days on the run into a pile, and tended to Fang as best I could. We didn't have much in the way of belongings, but what we did have, I didn't want to throw away. Who knew if we'd need it.

Gazzy and Angel were back before Iggy and Nudge, and when I mouthed headache at Angel she nodded and went over to Fang. He was huddled in blankets that I'd done my best to shake the sand off of.

The screeching of tires alerted us to Iggy and Nudge's presence. Nudge was behind the wheel, looking stressed and terrified at the same time, and when I went to take the driver's seat it took her a good minute to unclench her hands from around the wheel.

"I am never complaining about your driving again," Iggy told me. "Also, I think I need to throw up."

"Join the club," Fang said. Angel and I had patched up his face as best as we could, and he was holding a cotton pad over his cut-up cheek as he curled up across the backmost row of the minivan Iggy and Nudge had stolen.

"Gazzy, you're riding shotgun," I said. "Get a map."

Gazzy took his seat and rifled through the glove compartment. He moved with quick, rabbitlike motions. Fear reflex. I had it too when I was his age.

"Hey," I said, and put my hand on his back, "Don't worry, okay? Ari did this, which means he's been following us, but we're going to get away now. We're going to be safe."

"He's going to find us," Gazzy said. "They're always going to find us."

"We're going to go somewhere where nobody can find us," I said firmly. For the first time in days I felt like Angel's crazy mission had some good to it. "We're going to go someplace so big that even six bird kids blend in."

"Yeah?" Gazzy's blue eyes were full of tentative hope. He thought I could make this right. And if he was relying on me, I couldn't let him down.

"Yeah," I said. "Buckle up, everybody. We're going to New York."


	37. Crowded Streets

Gazzy and Angel were drumming their feet against the floor of the car. "I want to _be_ a _part_ of _it_ —"

"New York, Neeeew York," Iggy joined in.

I groaned. "I swear to God, if I have to hear this song one more time I will turn this car around."

That got a giggle from Nudge, which was the most positive emotion I'd seen her display in the week since we had busted out of that hellhole of a School. Who knew, maybe the distance was helping. Or maybe just spending days in an air-conditioned gas guzzler was good for the soul, because that was what we had been doing. Instead of taking to the air, which had worked so well last time, we were stealing cars, abandoning them when they ran out of gas, and breaking into peoples' houses to pay for motel rooms. We were a bunch of little delinquents. It turned out that super-quick reflexes and the ability to fly didn't only make you a freak on the run from crazy scientists and their wolf-monster enforcers; but also gave you the ability to steal just about anything you could get your grubby fingers on.

Being untethered like this felt good, but it was almost about to end, because we were close enough to New York City to ditch our latest ride and get on a bus.

Or, as it turned out, a subway.

"Dang," I said, as I settled into my seat, "I've never seen so many people together in one place." The subway was crowded. We weren't quite packed in like sardines, but it was close. My stomach twisted when I realized, with a sick sense of irony, that my latest stay in Hell, California, had given me more free space than this train car did.

But even though my claustrophobia was kicking in like a rabid donkey, I could still appreciate the chance to people-watch. Categorizing everybody helped me take my mind off of the fact that I was in here too. It felt a bit like I was floating out of my body as I sorted people into groups—the ones in suits who probably had jobs in skyscrapers, the guys wearing work boots and jeans and vests who built the skyscrapers, and the scattered teens who were enjoying the summer. There were two in a far seat, curled up against each other. They were both lanky, but the paler one was wearing an outfit that would make Fang proud, with hair nearly as long as his but a bit curlier. The other was black, wearing denim cutoffs and a face full of makeup, and had an arm around the punk one's shoulders.

I kind of wanted to reach out to them. They looked about our age. Maybe they could tell us what life was like here, and I could tell them what it was like to be a mutant freak on the run from the mad scientists who had created you.

The last normal humans that I'd had any kind of dealing with—if we discounted motel clerks and fast food cashiers that I'd barely exchanged twenty words with each—were Ella and Dr. M. A little pang went through me, thinking about them. They had been nice. They had patched me up even when they didn't have any reason to. They had seen my wings and not treated me like a freak. And they had made the best damn chocolate-chip cookies I had ever had. Maybe one day, when all this settled down, I could go and give them a visit.

And maybe pigs would fly.

I leaned my head against the glass of the window as the train slowly made its way to midtown. My Flock was around me, all of them looking just as tired as I felt. Well, except for Fang, who just looked like Fang. My eyes landed on his, and he met my gaze, and I looked away fast.

We hadn't talked about that kiss, and we weren't going to. It had been a one-time thing. Just thinking about it made fear and disgust prickle cold down the back of my neck.

"Angel, you're sure you know where we're going," I said.

Angel nodded, which made all of one of us. As impressed and slightly scared as I was by Angel's psychic powers, this was something new. And with Fang scarred and Ari evil and Nudge quiet and my head hurting like crazy, it was getting harder and harder for me to be sure if it was something she was developing on her own or something that had been forced onto her.

I didn't want to think of what it would be like if Angel went crazy. She was just a kid. I had held her in my arms when she was a baby, when she still had her useless little chicken wings, and it had been me who she had said her first word to. It had taken her a while to talk, but she'd been articulate in a way that even Gazzy wasn't. That was my Angel. She knew what she wanted, even if it took her a while to express it. Sharp as a tack and quick as lightning, in a lot of ways she was my daughter. Which was why I was humoring her with this. Even if it was a trap—which it very well might be—it would be something. A mission. Something to do instead of just survive. Something to think about that wasn't literally everything else that had happened to us.

We got off the train, climbed into the open air, and…

Okay.

Wow.

New York City completely engulfed us, swallowed us up and wrapped around us, and it seemed like my entire world was skyscrapers and people rushing around. The air was full of car horns and huge billboards, closer up than I could imagine, advertised everything from clothes to phones to underwear, of all things.

"Oh my God," Nudge said, sounding like herself for the first time in forever, "Is that _Macy's_?"

Fang gave the building in question an interested look.

"Street dogs!" Gazzy crowed, pointing at a vendor. "Max, can we get—"

Angel took my hand, eyes wide with wonder. "Everybody's so fast and so loud."

"Is that meat? Who's cooking meat?" Iggy demanded. "Max, give me the money so I can buy some dead animal and put it in my face."

Ignoring all of them, I scanned the crowds. Nobody had the build of an Eraser, and the only folks lingering like us were a bunch of guys lining the streets with stands, selling scarves and bags and hats. "Okay, first things first," I said firmly.

Five pairs of expectant eyes met mine.

I grinned. "Let's get some food."

We spent an absurd amount of money on street meat and knishes and bottles of lemonade and wandered through Manhattan in a food-induced wonder daze. And yeah, we probably overshot 31st Street, but it wasn't like we were on any kind of schedule. Walking around like this, even with the throngs of people everywhere, was keeping the kids on their feet. Nudge even had gained back some of her chatter, and was excitedly pointing out different things to Iggy—mostly bookstores, clothes stores, and a few electronics places. It was even easier for me to pretend that the low-level migraine I had was a result of the noisy city and not whatever the hell was going on in my head.

I wished I had the painkillers Dr. M had given me. That would stop this. But the School had taken those from me like they had taken everything else.

"Oooh," Nudge said, and pointed at a large red brick building. The sign on it read _Salvation Army_. "Clothing!" She turned her big brown eyes on me. "Max," she said, voice trembling just a little bit, "Can we please, please, please—"

"Fine," I groaned. "You're evil, you know that? Evil."

Some indiscernible emotion crossed her face for a split second, but it was gone as quickly as it came, and she threw her arms around me and squeezed. "I love you, Max!" And then she was off, as quick as a gazelle, bounding the steps into the building.

I followed.

It turned out that Nudge did make good choices after all, and being able to change out of our old clothes and wear stuff that we actually liked did seem to have everybody feeling better. Iggy and Gazzy had teamed up to put on a frankly startling amount of camouflage, with Iggy also sporting a neon orange tank under his camo jacket. Fang had pulled together an all-black ensemble that could have been from his closet at home, with Nudge likewise managing to make thrift store clothing look chic the same way she always had. Angel had opted for an impractical frilly dress, with—thankfully—leggings and sneakers on underneath.

I brushed off my new-to-me leather jacket, shouldered my backpack, and gave everybody a nod. "Feeling better?"

"I don't look like a grape anymore," Nudge said. She tugged on the hem of her rainbow-striped t-shirt and smiled. Equally multicolored bobbles kept her hair separated into two afro puffs. "Seriously, though, what kind of person only wears purple?"

"Yes, let's judge people's fashion choices while we rob them stupid."

Fang shrugged. "It was a lot of purple."

Iggy groaned. "Can we go back to wandering around instead of boring me with this stuff? All y'all could be purple for all I know."

"Alright, alright, keep your pants on. This city is huge, so let's split up."

"Fan- _tastic_ ," Iggy said. "Gasman, my man—"

"Is with me," I said. "You take Angel." She would be able to guide him better than any of the rest of us, and the chances of them stealing a car or blowing up a building dropped drastically. "Fang and Nudge, together you can form a singular coherent sentence, right? You two go together."

Iggy frowned. "Max, are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Are you sure that you haven't forgotten who the leader is?" I retorted. And then I sighed. A headache was brewing, but I didn't need to take it out on Iggy. "Listen, this city is both huge and crowded, so we should be able to blend in without a problem. But we're a very specific group of kids. Ari knows what we look like, how we work—he grew up with us. Our best chance to beat him is to change how we operate."

"Max is right," Fang said. Those three words, they really get into a girl's heart. I gave him a look, and he gave me a look back, and a part of me really wanted to say _screw it_ and wander off with him, and we could—

And we could—

I shook my head. Everything that I thought of had the kiss hanging over it like the world's biggest raincloud.

"You heard him," I said to Iggy, instead of saying anything to Fang. "Let's go." Talking fast, I laid out our plan of action, dividing up sections of the city for us to comb over. It was going to take us a while to find 433 East 31st Street, if it even existed, but that didn't mean that we couldn't try to find it.

As Gazzy and I headed off, I rubbed at the back of my neck. Sweat was starting to bead there. It was a hot summer day and I was used to the cool mountain air. Being all covered up like this didn't help either, but the alternative was letting my wings out and getting on the train to Cageville. Or Tinyroomville. Whatever they were calling it these days. So I was just going to sweat it out, and break in my combat boots while I was at it. Whoever had worn these before me must have had some really awful ideas about how to walk, because they pinched in places that my old boots never did.

I gave Gazzy a glance. My little trooper was holding up okay, it seemed. Out of all of us, he was the most normal.

Which was why my heart jumped in my chest when he looked up at me and said, "Ari was trying to kill Fang."

"He was," I agreed.

Gazzy's hands were in his pockets. "So it's okay if we kill him?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

I put a hand on his shoulder. "You won't have to do it. I promise." Ari was a threat now, and in this world there was only one way to deal with that. I had to take him out before he could hurt any of my Flock ever again. If he ever tangled with us again, it was going to be me who took him down.

"Why didn't Fang wake us up?" Gazzy asked.

I frowned. "Huh?"

"When he fought Ari. It would have been six on one."

"If it had been me, I wouldn't have woken you up either," I said. "I wouldn't have wanted you to get hurt. Erasers tear up kids like nobody's business. It's for the best if you get away from them."

"I can handle myself in a fight. I did it fine before."

"Yeah, before. When you had bombs and weren't on the lam all day." I shook my head. "Fang probably…"

Fang's scarred chest and the way his face had looked when he had shown it to me was at the top of my memories, and I was really grateful that Gazzy didn't have his sister's psychic powers.

"Fang keeps things to himself," I said. "He pulls into himself because he doesn't want to get hurt, and he does that even when doing that gets him hurt. So we have to stick around him, because he's going to go ahead and do something macho and try to be tough and not ask for help because he doesn't want to."

"Huh," Gazzy said.

"It's a boy thing," I told him. "Being macho. It's really dumb. Don't be like that when you grow up."

"Iggy's not macho."

"Iggy is Iggy," I said. "Most guys are pigs."

Gazzy screwed up his face and made several eerily realistic oinking noises. I laughed and shoved his shoulder, and he nearly stumbled into a skinny lady in a black dress and suit jacket. She gave him a disgusted look before hurrying down the street, her long black hair thrashing around wildly inspite of the fact that the breeze was barely blowing. I very professionally did not flip her the bird. What was her problem? Gazzy was a kid. Kids horsed around.

We were in a fairly busy area of the city, but then again, all areas seemed to be busy. I had given us the eastmost third of East 31st Street. Apparently in New York City, streets ran like little ribbons across the map, while avenues were big long ribbons running up and down the map. Aside from Broadway, which had just been put there to confuse me, personally. And all the other streets that absolutely didn't follow that rule.

Our path had been, for the most part, a straight line. Sure, we had taken a few detours around side blocks and knocked on every door with so much as a 43 on it, but no good had come of any of it, so for the moment we were just wandering down the street. We weren't even on 31st Street, not really. It had just… stopped. So we were on 30th.

And it was about to just stop too, because I could see FDR Drive and the cars on it, and after that there was just the river. But before that, in-between First and FDR, there was a huge glass-and-metal building, tall enough to give my neck a crick when I stared up at it. And stare I did, because even though I'd gotten used to tall buildings over the hours that I had spent in this city, the sheer size of this one was astonishing for another, much more sinister, reason.

The numbers on buildings had been slowly but surely going up as we walked along, which meant that this monstrosity had to be 433 East 31st Street. The building Angel had heard about in the School.

The plain white lettering over the revolving doors read New York University Medical Center.

We were so screwed that I didn't have a word for how screwed we were. Automatically I went into a defensive stance, scanning the area for people with the telltale bulk of Erasers. "Crap, crap, crap," I muttered, stomach twisting. "Crap, crap, double crap on a crap sandwich of crap…"

The School had been bad enough, and this building was double its size, in the center of Manhattan. How could I have ever thought we were safe when there were whitecoats who could take the subway to work in the morning? Gooseflesh prickled the back of my neck. Forget Erasers. Any of the people crossing the street could be something a thousand times crueler and infinitely more dangerous.

The light had turned, and it was okay for us to walk. Powered half by shock and half by morbid curiosity, I started forward. Gazzy stuck with me. His little hands were balled into fists, knuckles even whiter than the rest of him.

"Listen," I said, quiet and intent. "If things start going bad, get out. Run. Bust through the window and hit the sky flapping, and meet up with the others in the park like I told you to. I can handle myself."

"Didn't you just say that we had to stick by Fang if he was going into stuff alone because he was being macho?"

"Yeah," I said. "But Fang doesn't ask for help because he doesn't want to reach out to people. I don't ask for help because I know what I can handle, and I can handle this. And if you stick around after I tell you to run, I'm going to feed you your butt through a straw. Capiche?"

Gazzy sighed. "Capiche."

We went through the revolving doors.

The interior wasn't what I expected. I didn't want to gag from the smell of bleach in the air, for one. There were a few people who gave me and Gazzy odd looks, but no stares lingered. Still, I kept a close eye on the kid as I headed for the nearest receptionist's desk. The woman behind it was Asian and didn't appear to have hit thirty. She didn't look threatening in the slightest, but after my run-in with the mad scientist mom from back at the School, I had learned that appearances didn't mean squat when it came to whitecoats. Just because they weren't salivating at the thought of dissecting you didn't mean that they weren't fine with you being in a literal prison cell.

But still, I had to play nice. "Hello," I said in my friendliest voice, "I would like the number of this building, please."

The receptionist gave me a confused look. "The… number…"

"Yeah," I said. "You don't have it outside."

Behind the rectangular frames of her glasses, her eyes widened. "Oh! This is 550 First Avenue."

"Huh," I said. That was kind of anticlimatic. "What's the next building?"

"Miss?"

"You know, if this is 550 then what's 551?"

She sighed. "Miss, do you have an appointment?"

I could see her eyes go over to one of the uniformed men over by the wall, and while they probably weren't Erasers, I didn't want to take that bet. "Okay," I said, talking as quickly as I could. Maybe this wasn't a School. Maybe I could get a helpful answer. And maybe it wasn't. But I was going to give it one last chance, for Angel. "I don't, but I'm lost. I'm looking for 433 East 31st Street?"

The receptionist looked up at me, and then down at Gazzy, who was attempting an imitation of Nudge's Bambi eyes. After a long moment she turned her attention to her computer. "I'm sorry, but that doesn't exist."

"What?"

"The highest number that 31st Street goes up to is 248. To get to where you want to go, you'd have to go out onto the river, and unless you're the second coming, that's not possible. Now, if you don't mind, this is a hospital?"

I got the hint. We hustled out of there, and although it only took a few seconds before we were on the street, I didn't feel halfway safe until we were down the block and away. Even if that had been a normal hospital, it still gave me the creeps.

The sun was starting to hang low in the sky, which meant that it was time for us to head over to the park. It was a thirty-odd-block hike, which wouldn't have bothered me if I hadn't already spent the whole day wandering around. Gazzy, who was younger and shorter than I was, was in even worse shape, so we ended up hopping over the subway turnstiles and catching the Q up to the park. We got off a few blocks away, and in the short walk that we had left, I found a sandwich shop. There. Dinner. Hunter-gatherers had nothing on the amazing Maximum Ride.

Plus, they had cookies. Chocolate-chip ones. _Oven-warmed_ chocolate chip ones. Not as good as homemade, but hunter-gatherers weren't picky and so neither was I.

"Maybe the others will have found something," I said to Gazzy through a mouthful of cookie. It was my last mouthful of this cookie, and I put the other one in my pocket for later.

He sighed. "Maybe."

The others, in fact, had not found anything. And they all looked as tired as we were. As we sat in our little circle, shoulders hunched against the outside world, slowly chewing our sandwiches and sipping our drinks, bits and pieces of everybody's day spilled out.

"So there's a 433 out in Brooklyn," Nudge said. "But it's an apartment building. I pretended I was a Girl Scout and tried to scope the place out, but I really don't think it's some secret front for whitecoats." She took a sip of Coke and shrugged. "Being a fake Girl Scout was fun, though."

Angel, looking smaller than usual, sighed. "I thought it was maybe something to do with the subways," she said. "So we went on the 4 and the 3 and even the 1, and I looked all over the stops, and checked everybody's head, but nothing came up. And now my butt hurts from sitting too long."

"Yeah, we found something too," I said. "The closest thing to a 433 was a friggin' hospital." This got me and Gazzy more than a fair share of concerned looks, and even though Iggy didn't make eye contact with either of us, he still looked worried. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure it's a real hospital. But yeah, Ange. 31st Street ends way before it hits the four hundreds."

"So this is a bust and we can go out to the mountains," Iggy said. "Fantastic."

I gave him a flinty look. "No," I said, "So today was a bust and we can try again tomorrow."

"We're not finding anything, Max, this is insane—"

"—Watch who you're calling insane, jerk—"

"—I've been bumping into people like an idiot all day, I can't do this—"

"—Nobody is allowed to quit, not now, not ever—"

"—All you care about is Angel and being right, have you even bothered to think about what we're going to do if the Erasers find us—"

"—What are you, a coward?"

"Alright, enough!" That was Fang. He was standing between us.

Oh. And we were standing. And grabbing each other. Iggy slowly loosed the brown leather of my jacket and in return I let go of his camo.

"Sorry," Iggy muttered. "It's been a long day."

I sighed. "Yeah. Same here."

"Are you done?" Angel asked. "'Cause this is my fault, and I don't want you to fight, and you should just—not—fight—" Her breath was hitching, and that wave of protectiveness washed over me again. I crawled over to her and patted her shoulder.

"Aw, Angel, no, it's not like that, okay? It's just…"

"We're all under a lot of pressure," Iggy said. He barked out a laugh. "I sound like a dad in a bad teen movie."

"Better than sounding like a jerk," I told him, and gave him a friendly punch on the arm.

"Maybe I was wrong," Angel said. "Maybe there isn't anything." She sounded small, beaten-down and broken, and even as I felt bad for her my head throbbed with the beginning of another migraine.

"No, it's not like that," I said quickly.

"Well, it wasn't in the subway and it's not in Brooklyn and we can't walk on water to get to it, Gazzy, I can hear that—"

"Wait," I said. The throbbing behind my temples had picked up. "What if it isn't on the water?"

Nudge frowned. "Do you mean, like, Roosevelt Island?"

I shook my head. "East 31st Street is too far south for anything on it to be on Roosevelt Island. But what I mean is… in all the maps, if we draw a line to where 433 would be, it's just… in the water. But what if there's something under the water? Something running through the whole city? Something general that's easily accessible by anybody, but something specific only a few people know about?"

"I think I get it," Gazzy said. He was grinning, wide and dangerous and delighted.

An answering grin spread across my face. "We're going to break into the subway."


	38. Empty Tunnels

It turned out that breaking into the subway was a lot easier than I had expected. We took the Q back downtown, switched to the N to get us closer to the hospital, and then, instead of going back up through the turnstiles, we just waited until the train left and hopped down onto the tracks ourselves.

"Nobody touch the third rail," Gazzy said.

Nudge gave the rail in question a curious look. "What happens if you do?"

"The rats get an all-you-can-eat bird kid barbeque buffet," Iggy told her. "Come on."

And just like that, we headed down the railway tracks. "Iggy, if you hear something, you give us the heads-up," I said.

"What if what I hear is the voice of my conscience telling me what a terrible idea this is?"

"Keep that shit to yourself," I said, and we both laughed. It was more of a nervous laughter than anything. Just a week ago we had been imprisoned in the School, and now here we were, actively seeking out—what? Another School? Something worse?

But I couldn't deal with not knowing. Maybe Angel was going crazy. Maybe I was, too, or maybe my recombined DNA was starting to unravel and pretty soon I'd drop dead because the massive blood clot in my brain had burst or whatever it was that blood clots did. But if there was something down here… if 433 East 31st Street was real in some way… then maybe the rest of this meant something. Maybe our lives weren't just going to be running from Erasers, breaking into houses, and stealing food out of Dumpsters.

My head was hurting in a way it hadn't before, a low-level throb that was just off the beat of my heart. To try to distract myself from it I glanced around our surroundings and failed to notice literally anything. "It is crazy dark down here."

"Huh," Iggy said. "Really? I didn't notice." He took in a quick breath. "What the—okay. This way. Careful of the third rail."

The six of us followed him into an equally dark tunnel, but with one notable difference.

"Where did the tracks go?" Nudge asked.

"I'm guessing we've been upgraded to the platinum package on our tour of New York's most infested rat holes," I said. "How did you know, Iggy?"

"The air's different," Iggy said. He sounded genuinely confused. "Didn't you notice?"

"Not all of us can Daredevil our way through life."

"Fang can," Nudge said. "He has the outfit."

Fang made an offended noise. "That's Batman you're thinking of."

I couldn't see Nudge's indifferent shrug, but I knew it was there.

"So, Angel," I said, keeping my tone as light as possible as we walked toward what might or might not be our certain doom, "Any idea of what's waiting for us?"

"Not people," Angel said after a moment.

I frowned. "There's no Erasers? No whitecoats?"

"There's nobody."

Well, that was good news.

Of course, some people didn't know how to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Nobody-nobody or nobody like you couldn't read Jeb's mind?" Fang asked.

"Look, I thought we had established that that was one thing," I said. "No way is an entire School going to have the entire situation as Jeb. Even Ari didn't, and he was Jeb's kid." A pulse of pain spiked behind my temples, and I let out a harsh breath and leaned against the wall of the tunnel until it passed. "Son of a gun, son of a gun, son of a _gun_ ," I muttered, trying to calm myself. Not that being calm helped in any particular way.

Fang put his hand on my shoulder, fingertips moving in small circles. "Breathe."

"Been doing that for fourteen and a half years just fine without you reminding me," I said, but I was still grateful for him. I put my hand over his and squeezed. In the dark, nobody could see me blushing.

We kept going on. The tunnel was long, and it was winding, and just when I was sure that we were on a dead-end track to nowhere, I saw light. A single fluorescent tube illuminated a door. It wasn't huge, or made out of metal, and if it weren't for the fact that it were at the end of a secret tunnel, there wouldn't be anything odd about it.

Well, aside from the lock. Most doors didn't have locks that required a full keyboard to open. I hesitated in front of it, fingers resting lightly on the keys.

"Try 'password'," Nudge suggested. "Most people make their passwords 'password'."

The password wasn't password. It also wasn't password1 or password 12 or password123. And it wasn't madscientistlair either, which I thought was a little disappointing.

Fang frowned. "Try the address."

I raised my eyebrows, but typed in 433E31 and hit Enter.

There was a click.

"Nice," I said to Fang.

He shrugged.

I pushed the door open. I can safely say that none of us were expecting what was behind it. As the door swung open, bathing all of us in a soft blue light, Nudge looked like she was going to burst into tears and Angel and Gazzy grabbed each other's hands. Even Fang looked surprised. He leaned over to Iggy and started describing the place, but his voice was flat with shock.

I took several steps forward, not quite believing my eyes. The second I crossed the threshold, a projector whirred, and a blue screen appeared on the white wall. "Welcome," a soft female voice said, "to the Institute for Higher Living." She kept going on in that vein, about "technological innovation" and "the future of the world" as some slideshow involving skyscrapers and pictures of Bluetooth headphones played, but I didn't care. And aside from the barest glance around the room to ascertain that there weren't cages full of mutants hidden behind all the weird-looking technology with its blinking lights, I didn't look at the room. There was one thing in this Institute that was drawing my attention like a magnet drew metal filings, and I couldn't look away from it even if I wanted to.

Jeb's laptop rested on a simple white table. It didn't feel like I was walking when I went to it. It felt like I was floating. Ghosting my fingers over the surface didn't set off any alarms, so I opened it up.

It was locked.

"Okay, guys," I said, trying my best to keep my voice steady, "Who knows Jeb's password?"

"Try 'password'," Nudge suggested.

I gave her a flat stare. "Can't you just hack into this? You like computers, right?"

"That's… that's not how hacking works. Like. At all. It's not like"—she drummed her fingers on the tabletop—"and then, you know, I'm in. It's… it's…" She turned away, hand over her mouth. The harsh light made her dark skin look grayish, and her shoulders were shaking slightly.

I let her have her space and tried our names, all six of them and then all seven of them, and then our initials. MFINGA worked as well as MFINGAA—not at all.

"There's a hint," Angel said, and pointed at the space just under the password box.

I read the text. "What do you want?"

What did I want?

Answers, for one. What was this place and, if it was a School, why weren't there any cages? Why didn't the School put us in cages when they caught us? What was in the lowest levels of their basement? Were there any people out there—real humans, not whitecoats—who knew about us? Who missed us? Jeb was dead, but did any of us have any birth parents or were we all just test tube babies? Why did Angel feel called to this place, of all the places out there? How did Jeb's laptop get here—were there some good whitecoats looking out for us, or was this just the School's latest attempt to find out how we worked?

But beyond answers, I wanted so many things.

For my confusing feelings about Fang to go away. A home where Erasers didn't come knocking. To not have to try to guess Jeb's password because he would be alive and able to unlock it for me. To see Dr. M and Ella again, and not have to worry about them being stalked by Erasers and in danger because of the School. To fly away from all of this mess and not stop until there was nothing around me but the clear blue sky for miles.

I made a fist and rubbed at my eyes. They were burning, and I couldn't cry. I couldn't show weakness in front of my Flock.

"I want the Erasers to all drop dead," Gazzy said. "Is that a password? If it's not then my password is that I want to be strong enough to protect us all from the Erasers."

"I want a place to sleep at night," Iggy said. "And my bomb supplies back. And my lock-picking kit."

Nudge sniffled. "I want to be normal again."

Fang shrugged. "Security."

Angel very gently rested her hand on mine, and I felt more confused than before. The screen was blurry, and I had to blink away tears—the lights in this place were too bright, and the air-conditioning was blasting me in the face—to see it. But when I did, I saw that I'd missed something.

The password hint hadn't just been one line. Instead it was two.

 _what do you want?_  
 _who are you?_

Who was I? What kind of a question was that? I was Maximum Ride. I was the leader of this Flock—for real, now that Jeb was gone for good. I was homeless and angry and scared. But I knew all of those things, and I didn't think that they would make very good password answers.

"If this is this some sort of you-are-what-you-seek crap," I muttered, "I'm striking. Swear to God." Trying to think, I pulled my spare cookie out of my pocket where I had left it and bit into it. The chocolate didn't magically provide me with the password, but it tasted good and it made me feel safe.

Angel squeezed my hand. "We'll figure it out."

It should have been the other way around—me comforting her. But I pressed a kiss into her hair all the same.

And then the puzzle pieces clicked into place, and I knew the answer. It was like I was nine again, holding a baby Angel in my arms and listening to her first word, and it was like I was sitting at Dr. M's table eating cookies and getting painkillers. Still holding my cookie with one hand, I very carefully typed in _mother_.

The home screen appeared. For somebody who was on his laptop a lot, Jeb's screen was surprisingly empty. Actually, aside from two icons, it was completely empty. The text under the first icon read "For Max", and the second read "For Max (II)".

My stomach flip-flopped, and I clicked the first icon. It was a Word document.

 _Dear Max,_ it read;

 _If you're reading this then it's because it's time for you to grow up. I'm sorry that I can't be there to give you this talk in person, but the fact is that if you're reading this then I'm already dead._

I was reading the words aloud, softly, and had to stop to make sure that my voice didn't crack. Then I continued.

 _I've done my best to raise you and the Flock, and I'd say I did a pretty good job. Even if you can't scramble eggs you can throw a punch, pitch a tent, and survive in the wilderness on your own. You've grown from a scared girl in a cage to a strong young woman, Maximum, and I am proud beyond words of what you've accomplished. I know that you'll lead the Flock to great places, but I need you to trust me one last time._

 _There's a lot going on in the world around you. Everything is connected and, in a lot of places, you're what's connecting it._

 _You're going to save the world, Maximum._

I stared blankly at the screen for a long moment.

"Well, maybe he says how," Iggy said. "Keep going, keep going."

 _You're going to save the world, Maximum_ , I read again. _That sounds insane, but it's the truth. From the moment you were born you were special. You had something most experiments didn't: a destiny, a soul. And while I know you're confused now, and probably angry at me for leaving you, you're strong enough to do this. I will always believe in you, and I will always be proud of you._

 _You must be confused, and that's okay. It's okay that you don't have all the answers right now. But there are a list of places where you might find those answers._

 _Fly on and stay strong._

My hands were shaking and a tear slid down my cheek. "He believed in us," I said quietly. "He always did."

Fang squeezed my shoulder.

Nudge let out a strangled noise and said, "I'm going to check this place out." She said it the same way she had been saying things for most of this week, and I gave Angel a worried look. Angel looked back at me, and then over to Nudge, but I shook my head. I had never gotten to have that talk with Nudge. I wanted to give her the chance to tell me what was wrong. I didn't want to have to pry into her head seconds after she just got done reading a letter from our dead dad.

I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket and clicked on the second icon. This one was also a Word document, but much longer than the first, full of addresses and pictures of buildings and scanned whitecoat ID cards.

At first I didn't get it. All the pages seemed to be the same, equally confusing and frustrating. It was an endless glut of information that I couldn't make head or tail of. But then, slowly, I realized—it didn't matter if it made sense right now. Jeb probably had his own reasons for leaving us a list of these specific places, and those specific people, and it was okay if I couldn't figure it out the second I got it. Because the majority of these places were Schools of some kind, I was willing to bet, and I was going to figure out exactly what made them so special.

I was going to figure it out thirty seconds before I burned them to the ground.

"Is there a printer?" Iggy asked. "We should print this."

"Laptops can break like nobody's business," Gazzy said.

There was a printer, and Jeb's laptop was connected to it, too. I set up both documents to print and while the machine whirred into life, I wandered around the place. There really weren't any cages, but there was a lot of electronic stuff. Headsets, mostly, and earpieces and a few helmets that looked more like cages for the head. The back wall was lined with cubbies full of the latter. Some looked like prototypes, others looked like they were straight off the set of a sci-fi horror movie, black and chromed up and evil as all-get-out. Everything had some kind of blinking light on it.

Walking through this place felt weird. It was pretty obvious that it had some specific purpose, but I didn't know what. What was it about it that drew Angel here? Aside from Jeb's laptop, what were we supposed to find?

I glanced over at the printer. A sizeable stack of paper had already been churned out, but it was still working hard. We had a while before it was going to be done.

The wall in front of me was full of neatly labeled headsets. Some were bulkier than others, like the boxy headphones I'd seen a couple of people wearing. Others were sleeker. They were all labelled with neat little patterns of letters and numbers that made absolutely no sense to me. On a whim I stopped in front of a more slender headset. It wouldn't hurt just to try it, right? It wasn't like my head wasn't already killing me. I smoothed my hair back behind my ears and reached out—

Only to have Fang catch my hand in a vise grip.

"Owww, Jesus! Don't do that!"

He gave me a bleak stare but slowly released my hand. "You were not," he said, "About to put that thing on. You weren't doing that thing."

"I was doing the thing where I made my own choices," I snapped.

"Your own choices are stupid sometimes!"

"Your face is stupid sometimes!"

He rolled his eyes. "Look. I get you're upset because you just read that letter. We all are. But that doesn't mean you can be Saint Max, protector of the weak and patron of getting her head exploded."

"What if it already feels like my head is exploding?" I snapped. "Every second of the day, and not just because whatever those freaks at the School did to me, but because I have to put on a tough face for the kids and pretend like I know what I'm doing when I'm just as scared as the rest of them. You think I'm tough, Fang, and I am. I know I am. But I'm not invincible, and I need to be. So excuse me for wanting to try to get answers."

Fang's almond-shaped eyes were full of an emotion I couldn't place, and then he leaned in, his face nearly touching mine. His mouth opened like he was going to say something, and then closed, and he withdrew.

Right. Because that helped me understand anything. I was torn between the desire to want to kiss him and the shrieking confusion that made me want to run out of this Institute and straight into the subway tunnels as a train was coming by. It felt like fireworks were going off in my chest. It felt like I was going to throw up.

I settled for yanking the headset off the wall. "I'm still doing this," I told Fang, and then I put it on before he could say anything else.

At first I didn't notice anything different.

And then I heard the voices.

It felt like there was a thousand of them, each one talking to itself about a hundred different things, slow enough for me to catch a few words but fast enough for me to not be able to understand sentences. The noise built like a tide, crashing over me, and the pain behind my temples spiked as the voices reached a crescendo.

There was a high, far-off screeching noise, and the ground rushed up at me.

Blackness.

For a sweet second.

And then white faded in. Something was cool against my cheek.

The floor.

The floor was cool against my cheek because I was lying on it. Because I had screamed and passed out.

Right.

Fang was staring down at me, somehow managing to say I told you so and Are you alright? without opening his mouth. The headset dangled limply from a clenched fist, obviously broken.

"Well," I muttered, "That went fantastically."

"Max! Max, are you okay?" Gazzy came barrelling down the hallway. "I heard you scream and—"

"I'm fine," I said, and put a hand to my head. The pain had stopped, sort of. I made a mental note to find a drugstore and get some aspirin when we got the hell out of this place. "Don't put on the headsets." I shook my head slowly. What the hell were those things? Some of them looked like the Bluetooths that the whitecoats had been wearing before, and I couldn't imagine anybody, even a mad scientist, willingly doing that to themselves. Maybe the Bluetooths were something different. I sure wasn't going to try to find out.

Fang stuck out a hand, and I took it. His help made standing up easier, but while I was still woozy, I didn't want to lean on him. I might do something stupid.

Angel hurried toward us. Iggy and Nudge were behind her, looking anxious and depressed, respectively. "We need to go," she said, blue eyes wide. "Ari's in the tunnel and he has company."

I wished I could run away from this fight. But I couldn't. "Angel, sweetie," I said. "The tunnel's the only way in."

"Oh," she said quietly. "Oh no. Oh no, this is all my fault and it's going to be everything else all over again—"

I cut her off. "It won't be. We're stronger now. We survived that, and we're going to survive this. And sure, we're stuck in here, but we're not going to be stuck in here with them." I looked up from Angel's eyes and saw my entire Flock giving me uncertain looks. "They're going to be stuck in here with us. Now let's kick some Eraser butt."

I balled my hands into fists and got into a defensive stance, and all around me the Flock did the same.

The door swung open.


	39. Save the World, Max

Ari had goons with him, four of them. They were all tall and broad in that predictable Eraser sort of way. But Ari wasn't.

In fact he was short still, about Nudge's height, and while he was more muscular than her by a long shot he was still wiry. His fingers ended in sharp claws and when he snarled at me I saw fangs, and the violent red scar running down his face spoke to the kind of casual cruelty that Erasers inflicted on each other all the time, but between his small size and the brown wings he had half-extended, it was hard for me to see him as an Eraser. But that was what he was. He had nearly killed Fang before, and would kill any of us if he had the chance.

"Look who tried to break in somewhere," he said. The words came out mangled around his fangs. "Again. Max and her little merry band of mutant freaks. How does it feel being a failure at the one thing you try to do over and over, Max?"

"If I'm a freak what does that make you, Frankenwolf?" I shot back. And I did it without an ounce of hesitation. The thing standing in front of me, snarling at me—it wasn't my little brother. Ari had been sweet and kind. This wannabe Eraser was just wearing his skin like a stretched-out sweatshirt. The School had taken a good kid, eager to please and kind, and stretched him and mangled him into the monster across the room from us. "At least I was born this way, not stitched together by some back-alley med school dropout."

"Shut up, Max," Ari snapped. "You always talk too much." He bared his teeth at me. "Maybe I'll rip out your tongue."

"Maybe I'll bite out your throat," I retorted. "Don't need a tongue for that."

His lips drew back even further from his teeth, and he shuddered with barely-controlled rage before calming. "I want to make a deal."

"How's this for a deal?" I suggested. "You take your thugs and go back to California and I let you spend the rest of your miserable life there before I burn the School down."

"You know, I get that it's hard for you to think of things that aren't inside your little bubble because you are just that wrapped up in yourself, but that's not going to happen and you know it. Here's my deal. You give me them—" He gestured at Iggy, Nudge, and Gazzy. Nudge spat on the ground. Atta girl. "—And I let you go." He emphasized _you_.

"Yeah, and you and Fang and Angel are going to be pals for life," I said drily. "You clearly didn't get the message in all the years you spent with us, but this?" I gestured at the Flock. "Is a family. We're sticking together. So if you want us, come and get us. Because I'm not leaving anybody behind."

That did the trick. "Get the others," Ari snarled. "She's mine."

Well, that sounded healthy. But if wolf-boy wanted a personalized Maximum Ride ass-kicking, who was I to deny him?

He rushed at me, claws bared and fangs out, and I sprinted forward to meet him. I blocked his slashes with my forearms. "Is that all you've got?" I taunted. He lunged at me again. I hopped back and swung a booted foot up, hard and fast.

Did my boots fit me right? No.

Did they make a satisfying thunk when they hit Ari in the center of his chest? You betcha.

He staggered back a step and huffed out a little breath. The split second was enough time for me to get a look around. Fang was toe-to-toe with an Eraser over by a wall of computer towers. He dodged a punch, fired off a kick, and twisted out of the way as the Eraser swung at his side. The Eraser's hand hit the glass separating the towers from the rest of the lab, and spiderweb cracks spread out. The Eraser howled as blood sheeted down.

The others were doing more of the same. They had wised up since that morning in the strawberry field, turned from scared kids into Eraser-bashing mutants powered by fury and capable of giving just as good as they got.

I grinned.

And then Ari came at me. He moved so fast even I had a hard time tracking him, and when his fist hit my temple the world went gray. I stumbled back. I had to get away. He tried to follow me, and while I blocked his next swing, my shoulder jarred.

Pain is a message, Jeb had always told us. I set my shoulders and bared my teeth. "You're gonna need to try harder than that," I wheezed. And then I punched him in the face. I know how to throw a punch, if nothing else.

Which is why I was surprised when it glanced off his cheekbone. Ari had pulled back at the last moment, and although I'd split the skin on his cheek he didn't look too badly off. Of course. He knew me. He knew how I fought almost as well as I did.

I got a sinking feeling as he came at me, teeth and claws bared, too strong and too fast and too smart for me to beat easily. I held my ground as best I could, but he wasn't your typical Eraser. He wasn't the hunks of big dumb muscle that the rest of my Flock were beating.

An Eraser screamed and I saw Angel staring it down, her eyes burning bright in her little face. It hit the ground with a meaty thud.

"Angel! Go!" I shouted, dodging one of Ari's swings. "Get out of here!"

I slammed a wing into Ari's stomach, jerking it back as he tried to grab it, and saw her sprinting into the tunnel, her frilly dress flapping around her.

Ari lunged at me and I dodged, praying that he'd fall flat on his face. He didn't. He caught himself with absurd speed and came at me again, sneakers squeaking against the linoleum. I couldn't counter or block him so I dodged again, and this time he ran facefirst into a shelf full of headpieces. Bluetooths rained down on us.

"All of you, get out of here! I can handle Ari!"

Could I handle Ari? I wasn't sure.

Was I going to risk a single member of my family going up against him? Absolutely not.

I aimed a kick at Ari's kneecap, and he groaned but didn't buckle. He righted himself, and for a long moment we stood and stared each other down. An alarm was blaring somewhere, and I could hear the groans of wounded Erasers and the frantic beeping of broken electronics. And, in the background, the printer was still going. Great. Not only did I have to beat Ari, I had to grab ten thousand individual papers on my way out.

"You're going to lose," Ari panted. "Do you know why?"

Every second he was talking was a second I could use to find an opening. "Enlighten me."

"Because you're old. You're ancient in mutant terms. Outdated and useless—if you'd stayed at the School then you'd already be Eraser hamburger, replaced by somebody better."

"Well, you see, Ari," I said in a completely level tone of voice, and then threw my all into a high kick at his ribs. It connected and he sank down to one knee. I smashed my knee into his face, using my hand in his hair for leverage. "I didn't stay at the School, and just because I've passed the ripe old age of ten—"

Ari raked his claws down my legs, and even as I retreated, pain stinging me, I kept talking. "—I'm pretty sure I could kick the ass of whatever wannabe came at me. So why don't you run back to the whitecoats with your tail between your legs—" Ari had gotten up to his feet now, and came at me again. This time there was nowhere for me to go. My back was up against the wall of those weird helmets.

Did I let that stop me from running my mouth? Of course not.

"—Because really, being a coward is all you're good at," I finished. I got my legs under me as best I could, my hands balled into fists still. If I was going to go out, it was going to be with a fight. "So why don't you come prove me wrong?"

He moved so fast that I barely saw him.

But instead of dodging or swinging, this time I did something different.

I jumped straight up and clung to the cubicles for dear life.

Ari couldn't stop himself fast enough. He plowed into the cubicles, head between my calves for a split second, and then rebounded and hit the ground. Blood sheeted down his face from a huge gash in his forehead.

That was when I struck. I grabbed the closest helmet and dropped to the ground. Ari tried to get up on his elbows but I slammed my foot into his chest again. This time, with him on his back, it had a better effect. He went back down, writhing under me but ultimately unable to fight back. I leaned down and slammed the helmet onto his head.

The effect it had was almost immediate. He yowled in agony, sounding all for the world like a cat about to die. He thrashed around on the floor, helpless, not aiming for me so much as trying to fight the pain. He was defenseless and he had already tried to kill me. He had nearly killed Fang. This was my time to strike, and to protect my Flock.

But I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill him. Even if he wasn't my little brother any more, I couldn't murder him, and I definitely couldn't do it while he wasn't even trying to hurt me. My breath came in short little pants as I clutched my leather jacket to me. All of a sudden it didn't seem to protect me from the air conditioning half as well as it had before. This Eraser on the floor, screaming in pain—he wasn't my brother. He wasn't the little kid who had looked up to me. But he was still somebody, and I couldn't bring myself to hurt him when he was like this.

I turned on my heel and started running down the hall. I'd get the papers and get out. Maybe I'd get lucky and Ari's brains would leak out of his ears and I wouldn't have to deal with this.

I grabbed handfuls of paper in a daze, not reading the words on them, and sprinted out into the hall with the printer still going. Jeb's words were echoing in my mind. _It's okay that you don't have all the answers right now_ , I could hear him saying, in tune with my pulse pounding in my throat. _You've grown from a scared girl in a cage into a strong young woman, Maximum._

As I neared the end of the tunnel a train rushed past me, sending hot air that whipped my hair into a frenzy and tore papers out of my slack grip. The papers twisted in the air, little white replicas of Ari twisting on the floor.

 _You have something most experiments don't_ , I could hear Jeb saying. _A destiny. A soul._

Whatever they had done to Ari, had they torn his soul out?

The walk to meet back up with the Flock was the longest I'd taken, and I didn't even walk for most of it—I scaled up the nearest fire escape and took to the air, taking a running leap off of a rooftop. All I could think about was that letter Jeb had written.

 _You're going to save the world, Maximum._

When I touched down in Central Park, I could hear the familiar sounds of my Flock arguing.

"—Should be back by now," Iggy was saying. "Something happened. I'm going after her."

"I'm coming with," Gazzy said, sounding scared but resolute.

"She said not to." That was Fang. "If Max told us to wait here, then she'll come back."

"And she will," I said, walking up to them. They had spread out around the base of a tree. Nudge and Angel were already up in its branches, wrapped up in the extra sweatshirts we had.

"Max!" Gazzy said. "Are you okay? Did you kill Ari?"

Fang gave me a long, quiet look, and I thought about how scared I was when I had pulled him out of the lake. It seemed impossible, but that memory and the memory of Ari screaming in pain held equal weight in my mind. I hated myself for it.

"I got him pretty good," I said. "I guess we'll find out."

"Good." Angel's voice threaded down from her spot up in the tree. "I don't want him to hurt us anymore."

"Me either," Nudge said. "We never did anything to him, why can't he just—" She sniffled. "Why can't he just leave us alone?"

Poor kid.

"I don't know," I said honestly. "Maybe he was always bad and we just didn't notice. Maybe the School made him bad. But I do know that I'm not going to let him hurt you, okay?"

Nudge bobbed her head in a nod, still huddled up in sweatshirts.

"Okay," I said, and crouched down on the grass, setting the papers down in front of me. It wasn't even close to a quarter of what Jeb had left for me, but the letter was there. I snatched that up and folded it up small, tucked it into my pocket, and turned my attention to the papers. They still didn't make sense, but bits of things jumped out at me irregardless. There were buildings, graphs, but the picture that grabbed me was of a girl with hard-set green eyes and long silver-blonde hair. There was a determined scowl on her face and she was a mutant, I could tell, even without seeing scales or wings. We had the same look. The survivor look. I flipped through the pages I had, but that was the only picture of her. I frowned. "Does anybody have the laptop?"

Fang produced a very battered-looking hunk of metal from inside of his coat and set it down gently on the grass. That was it, then. My childhood and the only chance I had of getting a coherent answer, gone in one blow.

"An Eraser stepped on it," Fang said. His eyes met mine. "Sorry."

I sighed. "It's alright. We'll manage." We had managed before. "Jeb wants us to save the world," I said quietly. "And I think we all know what that means."

Fang was the first to speak. "Destroy the School."

"Destroy everything that even touches it," Iggy said. "That's what all that is, isn't it?" He waved a hand in the general direction of the papers. "The stuff that touches it?"

"Burn it down and blow it up and pour gasoline all over the ashes and blow them up," Gazzy said.

Angel's voice floated down again. "Stop them from hurting any more kids."

Nudge was past tears, rough but determined. "Keep them away from us. For good. Forever."

"Yeah," I said, and stood. "Look. I'm going to level with you here. If we try to do this, it's going to be a lot. We're going to have to deal with Ari, and instead of Erasers hunting us it's going to be us walking into their houses with big eat me signs around our necks. It's going to be scary and it's going to hurt, every day, for a long time. The stuff that Jeb gave us—there's pages and pages of it, and I didn't even get all of it. And I don't even know if that is all of it. The School is huge and it's evil and it hurts kids. I don't know how it got us, but I don't think it was pretty."

I took in a deep breath of cool night air. My Flock was looking at me, concern and confusion warring on their faces. "But here's the thing," I said. "It doesn't matter how big they are. Or how tough they are. Or how many Erasers they throw at us. We're smarter, and we're tougher, and we have something they don't."

"Bombs," Gazzy suggested. Iggy stuck out a fist and he bumped it.

"Telepathy," Angel sing-songed.

"A sense of fashion," Nudge said, and grinned a little.

Fang didn't say anything, but he quietly squeezed my hand.

"Yeah," I said. "We've got spirit. They can shoot at us and hunt us, but you know what? We're going to come back, meaner and uglier than before. And we're going to fight them until we win, no matter what they do to us."

"Hell yeah," Iggy said.

I smiled at him, at all of them, and held Fang's hand tighter. The weight of everything had settled solidly on my shoulders, but with these five around me, I could bear it, and maybe that was what being a leader was about. Not being strong _for_ people, but being strong _with_ them. I weighed my next words before I said them, and felt the trueness of them. And then I let them out into the night air. "Guys, I really do think that we can do this."

* * *

 _While Try Not to Scream wouldn't exist without the immeasurably valuable help of Tokoloshe Monster, and while it was undoubtedly shaped by the commentary of many others, it would remain woefully unfinished if it weren't for the contribution of one person in particular. They have always been up to talk meta with me, always ready to offer both criticism and words of encouragement, and always in a perpetual state of excitement about the characters and my writing. They pushed me to think about things in ways that I would never have considered without them, and I'm a better writer and a better person for having known them. It's been almost a year since TNTS was updated, and over two years from when it was first published, and it's hard to believe but we've been friends for even longer than that, but it's true, and every day has been a treasure. They've been with me in the Google Doc commentary as I wrote chapters, with me in the review box when I posted them, with me on Skype video chat when ch26 came out, and while they weren't with me when I wrote the final thirteen thousand words of this over the course of Friday and today, they were with me in spirit because I was doing it for them and I wanted to surprise them. So as we close the first part of MRNB, I'd like to dedicate this installment, as flawed and imperfect as it is, to Kamaria._

 _I love you, babe. Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis much._


End file.
